Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate

A Four-Legged Gate Built Wider Than the Type Allows

Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate stands at the head of the approach in the Jingu district of Miyazaki City, was erected in 1907, and became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in January 2010. Its opening spans 5.5 meters, which for a gate of this type is close to the practical limit.

The type is Shikyakumon, literally a four-legged gate: two main posts carrying the ridge, with two shorter struts in front and two behind, six timbers in all. It is one of the oldest gate forms in Japanese building and it is normally modest, a doorway wide enough for people. Here the same six-post logic has been stretched to carry a span that most examples never attempt. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes the width explicitly, calling it large in scale for the type.

Everything above the posts is kept plain. The roof is Kirizuma-zukuri under copper sheathing, the rafters run in a single widely spaced tier, and there is no carved ornament in the gable. What holds the frame together are a tie beam through the main posts and horizontal ties through the rest, with a single boat-shaped bracket above each of the flanking struts. The official description ends with two words that summarise the intent: plain, and heavy.

Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate was built in 1907. It is the southernmost of the registered structures on the approach, and the first piece of that building campaign a visitor meets.

The Chrysanthemum Fittings

Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation, as registration number 45-0063, listed on 15 January 2010 and gazetted on 3 February.

The feature that distinguishes it from the other registered structures here is metalwork. The double board doors carry large chrysanthemum-crest fittings, and they are the single most deliberate piece of display in a gate that otherwise refuses decoration. The shrine is dedicated to Emperor Jimmu, counted as the first sovereign, and the crest states that relationship in the most direct visual terms available. On a building where even the bracket blocks are reduced to one shaped piece of timber each, the fittings carry the entire symbolic burden.

There is a second point worth knowing. In the gable, the frame is formed by inoko-sasu, two rafters leaning together in a triangle, with a short strut set between them at the centre. The same carpentry recurs in the worship hall and the offering hall further up the approach. It is the connective tissue of Itō's design here, and the gate is where a visitor meets it first.

What to Look For

Come at Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate straight on from the south, from far enough back that the whole opening fits in view. The width reads immediately. Then move to one side and look at the posts. Main posts and flanking struts are all round in section, not squared, which is less common than it sounds and softens what would otherwise be a very blunt silhouette.

Get close to the doors. The chrysanthemum fittings are sized for viewing at a distance, but up close the fixing nails and the way the plate is dished to sit against the boards become visible. Copper and timber weather at different rates, and the contrast between the green roof, the grey-brown boards and the fittings is sharper here than anywhere else on the approach.

Then step through and turn round. Framed in the opening from the north side is the outer stretch of the approach, and the fence running east and west from the gate's flanks closes the composition on both sides. The gate is designed to be looked back through as much as looked at.

Early morning is the useful hour. The gate faces down a south-running approach, so the front elevation is lit from low and to the side shortly after opening, and the relief of the fittings is at its strongest before the sun climbs.

Visiting Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate

Miyazaki Shrine Main Gate is passed through rather than viewed from behind a barrier. It serves as the everyday entrance to the inner approach and can be walked through freely while the precinct is open.

There is no interior to visit and no restriction on ordinary photography. Because the approach carries a steady flow of worshippers through the day, the cleanest view of the gate on its own is early, before the counter opens.

Routes to the approach and general visiting conditions are covered on the Miyazaki Shrine page.