Iochi Shrine Stone Bridge and Stone Wall

A Stone Bridge on the Approach to a Shrine

The Stone Bridge and Retaining Wall of Ioshi Shrine (五百禩神社石橋及び石垣, Ioshi Jinja Ishibashi oyobi Ishigaki, the shrine name also written 五百祀神社) stand at Tera-no-waki, Kusubaru, Nichinan City, Miyazaki Prefecture, date from the early Meiji era, and were entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 10 September 2010. The bridge is a stone girder crossing 4.1 metres long and 4.2 metres wide; the wall runs 43 metres.

Note the proportions. The bridge is wider than it is long. That single fact tells you what it was for: not spanning a river but carrying a formal approach across a cut ditch, with enough breadth for a procession to pass without breaking rank.

The crossing sits east of the shrine's stone fence. Its deck is made of ten stone members laid across a girder that arches slightly, giving a shallow drum-back profile, and a low balustrade runs along both edges. A single pier rises at the centre of the span. The material throughout is Obi stone, a soft workable stone quarried locally and used across this part of Miyazaki.

A Temple That Became a Shrine

The ground under these stones changed identity in 1872. Until then it held Hoonji, a temple founded for Ito Suketake, first lord of the Obi domain, known posthumously as Hoon-ko. Hoonji was one of the three great temples of Obi, held a stipend of one hundred koku, and served as the Ito family mortuary temple through the Edo period.

Then came haibutsu kishaku, the anti-Buddhist movement that followed the Meiji Restoration. Hoonji was dissolved. On its site rose Ioshi Shrine, whose main hall was completed on 9 April 1876, enshrining Oyamatsumi-no-kami together with the spirits of successive generations of the Ito house. The ceremonial and connecting halls were rebuilt in 1904.

The name repays a moment's attention. Ito Suketaka established his castle at Tonokori in Saito, and by the time of Ito Suketomo, the last lord, 535 years had passed. Suketomo chose a name meaning five hundred years of veneration. He was, in effect, naming a shrine after the length of his own family's tenure, at the precise moment that tenure ended.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the bridge and wall to the early Meiji period, a range given as 1868 to 1881, which places their construction close to the shrine's founding. Nichinan City records for the same property give the period as pre-modern, and this discrepancy has not been resolved in published sources.

The Garden Behind the Gate

Cross the bridge and the ground rises into what was the Hoonji temple garden. Three stone bridges are set into the hillside in sequence, an arrangement uncommon enough that the garden has drawn attention in Japanese garden history. Tajima Mannosuke, a gardener active in Obi during the Taisho era, is said to have worked on it.

Five structures at the shrine were registered together on 10 September 2010: the main hall, the worship hall, the stone fence, and the stone bridge and retaining wall treated as one item. The registered bridge is the entrance crossing described above, not the triple arrangement in the garden.

Behind the main hall lie the graves of successive generations of the Ito family, along with the tomb of Komura Jutaro, the Obi-born diplomat who negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth. A cemetery for the dead of the Satsuma Rebellion occupies the adjoining terrace.

Masonry Worth Slowing Down For

The retaining wall holds the earth along the cut ditch. It is laid in kirishi kenchi-zumi, dressed blocks set in the diagonal kenchi pattern, and stands 0.7 metres high across a 43-metre run. Visitors who look closely tend to remark on how little space shows between the blocks.

The bridge deserves the same slow look. The ten deck stones are visible from the ditch below, and the balustrade is low enough that it reads as a lip rather than a railing. Obi stone weathers to a warm grey and takes moss readily, so the surfaces here carry a century and a half of texture that a harder granite would not have accumulated.

Around a hundred clumps of yellow flag iris grow on the shrine grounds, planted more than three decades ago and flowering in May along the approach. The annual festival falls on 26 July, though some sources give the second Sunday of July, so confirm locally before planning around it.

Getting There

Ioshi Shrine sits in the hills a short distance outside the old castle town of Obi, whose samurai quarter is a nationally selected Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. From Obi Station on the JR Nichinan Line the walk takes about twenty minutes; the station rents bicycles, which cuts it considerably. Buses from Miyazaki City and central Nichinan stop at Obi, roughly six minutes on foot from the shrine. Drivers coming from Obi Castle should allow about five minutes.

The grounds are open, free and unstaffed. There is no ticket office and no fixed opening hour, so the bridge and wall can be seen at any reasonable time of day. Photography is unrestricted on the grounds, though the shrine remains an active place of worship and a working cemetery lies behind it, which is reason enough to keep a camera discreet during services and at graveside.

Enquiries are handled by Tanoue Hachiman Shrine rather than by staff on site. Obi itself is worth building the day around: the castle gate, the samurai residences, and the Komura Memorial Hall are all within walking distance of the station.