Jakushoji Temple Gate

The Gate the Painter Paid For

Jakushoji Gate (寂照寺山門, also written Jakushō-ji Sanmon) is a temple gate in Nakanocho, Ise City, Mie Prefecture, built between 1797 and 1805 and added to Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 25 July 2011.

The opening measures 3.0 metres across. It is a yakuimon, a gate type with two substantial main posts and two lighter rear posts, the ridge carried forward of centre so that the roof overhangs the approach more deeply than the inner side. One bay wide with a single doorway, it is roofed in kirizuma gable form under hongawara tiles.

Ise City attributes its construction to Gessen (1741–1809), the painter-monk who served as abbot of Jakushoji, and dates it to the years between 1797 and 1805. The city's assessment calls it large for its type and notes that the detailing carries the characteristics of the later Edo period clearly.

Large is relative. A three-metre opening will not impress anyone who has walked through the great gates of Kyoto. But yakuimon is a domestic and institutional gate type, common at samurai residences and temple subsidiary quarters, and within that class this one has weight.

How the Frame Holds Together

The interest of a yakuimon lies in its jointing, and this gate rewards a close look.

A kabuki, a horizontal tie beam, spans between the two main posts. Between the main posts and the rear support posts runs a pair of beams working together: a mebari or lower beam takes the load, and an obari, the upper beam, rests on it, with nuki penetrating ties binding the assembly. Between the two rear posts a kōryō, a beam with a gently curved soffit, works with the purlin above to lock the back of the frame.

In the gable, a taiheizuka strut of bottle-like profile rises to the ridge, flanked by oigata, carved wing-shaped brackets that spread from its base. The eaves are hitonoki mabara-daruki: one tier of rafters, widely spaced. Hanging from the gable is a gegyo, the pendant board that conceals the ridge purlin end, here of the three-lobed sanka type with fin-shaped hire pieces at the sides.

The vocabulary sounds elaborate. The gate itself is not. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record describes it as dispensing with ornament and showing solid workmanship in good zelkova timber. Zelkova, keyaki, is hard, close-grained and expensive, prized for exactly this sort of exposed structural work. Money went into the material rather than into carving.

Gessen, and Where the Money Came From

The restraint reads differently once you know who built it.

Gessen was born in Nagoya in 1741, the son of a miso merchant, took the tonsure at seven, and entered Zōjōji in Edo as a teenager. He studied painting under Sakurai Sekkan while pursuing religious training, then moved to Kyoto, attached himself to Chion-in, and came under the influence of Maruyama Ōkyo's realism and Yosa Buson's manner. In 1774, aged thirty-four, he was sent to Ise to take charge of Jakushoji, then in a state of collapse.

His reputation was made almost immediately. Ōkyo had been commissioned to paint sliding doors and screens for a shrine functionary's house damaged by a typhoon, fell ill, and withdrew; Gessen completed the work in his place. Demand for his brush followed.

He charged for everything, and was mocked for it. The nickname that stuck was Gessen the beggar. What the mockery missed was where the fees went. He kept none of it: the money rebuilt the temple, and 1,500 ryō was deposited with the Yamada magistrate's office so that the interest could relieve the poor of Uji-Yamada and the surrounding villages each December. The fund was known as gessen-kin and the distributions continued into the Meiji period.

A gate in good zelkova with no ornament fits that record. The material is not cheap; the carving budget, effectively, went elsewhere.

Jakushoji had been founded in 1677 as a memorial temple for Senhime (1597–1666), granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and had declined badly before Gessen arrived. He remained abbot until his death in 1809.

What to Look For

Stand outside the gate before passing through it. Furuichi in Gessen's day was one of Japan's largest pleasure quarters, ranked with Yoshiwara in Edo and Shimabara in Kyoto, packed with theatres and brothels serving pilgrims who had finished at Ise Jingu and wanted to break their fast. The road outside this gate was that street. The threshold divided the quarter from a temple where the memorial tablet of a shogun's daughter was kept, and the plainness of the woodwork looks like a considered position rather than an economy.

Then look up at the ridge line from the outside and from the inside. The forward-set ridge of a yakuimon means the two elevations are not symmetrical, and the difference is visible from a few paces either way.

Then find the gable pendant. The three-lobed gegyo with its side fins is the one place where the builders allowed themselves a shaped profile, and it repays a moment's attention precisely because the rest is so restrained.

Beyond the gate stand the temple's other two registered buildings, the Konpira Hall of 1839 to the east and the plastered Kannon Hall beside it. Both went up after Gessen's death. A stone figure of him stands in the grounds.

Visiting

The gate is the one registered structure at Jakushoji that can be examined properly without asking anyone's permission, since it stands on the street and is passed through to reach the precinct. The grounds are normally open without charge. The interiors of the Konpira and Kannon halls are not regularly open; enquiries go to the temple on 0596-22-3743, and Mie Prefecture's tourism information advises confirming access before travelling.

Photographing the gate from the road is generally accepted. Jakushoji is a working Jōdo-sect temple with a cemetery, so more involved photography inside the precinct is worth clearing first.

From Ise-shi Station (JR and Kintetsu) or Ujiyamada Station (Kintetsu), take a Mie Kotsu bus bound for Urata-chō and get off at Nakanocho, about ten minutes, then walk two minutes. Walking from either station takes roughly twenty-five minutes up the old pilgrim road.

The Ise Furuichi Sangū Kaidō Museum is a minute from the bus stop and sets out the history of the quarter and of Ise kabuki. Asakichi Ryokan, the timber inn stepped down the hillside on kakezukuri framing, stands nearby and is registered in its own right; it is the last large building surviving from the quarter.