Haiseiden

A Hall Built in the Shape of a Travelling Poet

The roof of the Haiseiden curves downward like the brim of a wide travelling hat, and the resemblance is no accident. The whole building was designed to read as a figure: the poet Matsuo Bashō, dressed for the road. Visitors who arrive expecting a conventional shrine or pavilion tend to stop and look twice. The rounded upper roof stands for the traveller's woven hat, the wooden name-plaque reading "Haiseiden" sits where the face would be, the eight-sided eaves below suggest a straw rain cape and robe, and the slender posts ringing the structure read as the poet's staff and legs.

The hall sits inside Ueno Park in Iga, Mie Prefecture, on the grounds of Iga-Ueno Castle. It was completed in 1942 to mark the 300th anniversary of Bashō's birth. In December 2010 it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan in the architecture category, recognised for the originality of its design.

Bashō, Born in Iga

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) was born in Iga-Ueno, the very ground the Haiseiden now occupies. He is the poet most responsible for raising haikai, the short linked verse that gave rise to the modern haiku, to the level of serious art. His travel diary Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) and verses such as the one about an old pond and a frog are read far beyond Japan today.

The idea of honouring him with a building came from Kawasaki Katsu (1880-1949), a member of the House of Representatives who was himself from the region. Kawasaki paid for the project with his own money and oversaw its creation. He wanted something that would express the figure of Bashō as a wanderer rather than a static monument, and he turned to one of the most inventive architects of the age to make it work.

An Architect Known for the Unexpected

Kawasaki brought in Itō Chūta (1867-1954), a professor emeritus at Tokyo Imperial University whose other works include the Tsukiji Hongan-ji temple in Tokyo. Itō had a reputation for blending traditional Japanese forms with bold, sometimes startling invention. Under his guidance, the local carpenter Shimada Sennosuke handled the design and another local builder, Morimoto Genkichi, carried out the construction. The hall was finished on 15 November 1942.

The plan is unusual at every level. The lower floor is an octagon wrapped by an open eaved walkway; the upper floor is a circle. Above it sits a roof in a modified pyramidal form with softly rounded corners. Almost every important timber, the posts, beams, rafters and bracket arms, is cut to a round cross-section rather than the squared shape normal in Japanese building. Both roofs are covered not in tile but in layered cypress bark. Kawasaki's own 1942 account records that Itō pushed for cypress bark over the tiles first proposed, a choice that gives the curves their soft, continuous line.

This is what the Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out: a large-scale memorial building of a form found nowhere else, grounded in traditional carpentry yet shaped by a free and original imagination. The designation rests on its excellence as a work of design.

What Waits Inside, and When You Can See It

The interior is built around a single seated figure. At the centre of the ground floor rises a circular stepped base, and on it stands an eight-sided altar of Iga ware, the local stoneware pottery for which the area is known. Within an octagonal shrine cabinet sits a life-size seated statue of Bashō, also fired in Iga ware. The figure was modelled on a meditative likeness by the sculptor Hasegawa Eisaku and fired by Kawasaki himself.

Here is the practical point worth planning around: the statue is shown to the public on only one day a year. Every 12 October, the anniversary of Bashō's death, the hall opens for the Bashō Festival, when haiku and linked verse submitted from across the country are dedicated before the figure. On any other day you can admire the building from outside but not view the statue within.

Look up while you are there. The exposed underside of the eaves, left unceilinged as a decorative open roof, shows off the round timbers and the fan-arranged rafters. A short distance to the south stands a small thatched gate, a single-bay structure raised at about the same time and included in the same cultural property designation along with the shrine cabinet and the ridge tag recording the building's history.

Around the Hall

The Haiseiden shares Ueno Park with several of Iga's best-known sights, so it folds easily into a half-day on foot. A minute or two away stands Iga-Ueno Castle, raised by the warlord Tōdō Takatora and ringed by some of the tallest castle stone walls in the country. The Iga-ryū Ninja Museum sits nearby, a reminder that Iga is famous as a home of the ninja tradition. The Bashō-ō Memorial Museum, a few steps from the Haiseiden, fills in the poet's life and work for those who want more.

The park is reached in about five minutes on foot from Uenoshi Station on the Iga Railway, a line whose carriages are sometimes painted in ninja designs. Drivers can come off the Meihan Expressway and reach the area in roughly ten minutes. Entry to the Haiseiden grounds is free.