A Buddhist Pagoda Inside a Shinto Shrine
An inscription on the bronze wind bells of this three-storied pagoda records the year 1515, the twelfth year of the Eishō era, placing its construction late in the Muromachi period. The tower stands about 20 meters tall among old cedars on the wooded grounds of Shinkai Sansha Shrine, in the Taguchi district of Saku City in eastern Nagano. It is a three-bay pagoda roofed in kokera-buki, a covering of thin wooden shingles split and overlapped by hand rather than laid in clay tile.
The first thing visitors tend to notice is the contradiction in plain sight: a Buddhist pagoda rising inside the precinct of a Shinto shrine. For much of Japanese history this was ordinary. Buddhist and Shinto worship had been entwined for over a thousand years, and pagodas, bell towers, and Buddhist halls commonly shared ground with shrines. Shrine tradition traces the tower back to a pagoda of the neighboring Buddhist temple, the jingū-ji, said to have been founded in 849. The building that survives, however, is firmly a work of the sixteenth century.
How It Survived the Meiji Years
The pagoda came close to vanishing in the nineteenth century. In 1868 the new Meiji government ordered the formal separation of Shinto and Buddhism, and a campaign of anti-Buddhist destruction known as haibutsu kishaku followed. Buddhist structures standing on shrine land were among the most exposed.
Local accounts describe how Shinkai Sansha kept its tower. Rather than defend it as a pagoda, the shrine declared that the building was not a pagoda but a storehouse, a hōko. The reclassification was accepted, and the structure was left standing. The story is repeated at the shrine and in district histories, and the result speaks for itself: one of the few medieval pagodas in Japan that remains on shrine grounds to this day.
Designation and What Makes It Notable
The pagoda was placed under national protection on 28 August 1907, an early designation that has carried through to its present status as an Important Cultural Property. Its companion piece on the same grounds, the East Main Shrine, was designated separately in 1937 and is likewise an Important Cultural Property.
What earns the tower its place is a combination of date and carpentry. Securely dated to 1515, it documents how a provincial workshop in eastern Shinano handled the architecture of its time. The structure mixes two traditions. Its overall character is wayō, the older Japanese building manner, but it absorbs elements of karayō, the Zen-influenced style imported from China. The detail most often singled out is in the rafters: the first story follows the Zen-style arrangement, while the second and third stories return to the wayō manner, so the rafter direction shifts as the eye travels upward. Few three-storied pagodas record that transition so legibly.
What to Look For
Stand back far enough to take in all three roofs at once, then look again at the lowest one. The change in rafter treatment between the first and upper stories is subtle, and noticing it rewards a slow second look.
The bronze wind bells, or fūtaku, hung at the eaves are more than ornament here. It is their inscription that fixes the date of the whole building, a reminder that small fittings sometimes carry the most important evidence.
Close by stands the East Main Shrine, a single-bay structure in the nagare-zukuri form with a roof of cypress bark, hiwada-buki. Between the central and western shrine halls sits the mitamashiro-ishi, a stone pillar carved with paired mythical animals and bearing a date corresponding to 1358. A local legend says that pressing your ear to the stone lets you hear the waves of distant Lake Suwa, an echo of the shrine's old ties to the Suwa deity.
The Shrine and Its Setting
Shinkai Sansha was the chief shrine, or sōja, of the old Saku district. The name "Sansha," meaning three shrines, comes from its three halls. The eastern hall enshrines Okihagi-no-mikoto, regarded as the deity who opened the Saku region; the central hall holds his father Takeminakata, the god of nearby Suwa; the western hall, his uncle Kotoshironushi. The shrine drew the patronage of warriors for centuries. The warlord Takeda Shingen is recorded as having offered a written prayer here before his 1565 campaign against Minowa Castle, and that document survives among a small group of medieval papers kept by the shrine.
The grounds sit roughly two kilometers east of Usuda Station on the JR Koumi Line. Approached on foot, the path passes beneath tall cedars before the shrine halls and the pagoda come into view in the quieter ground behind them. The precinct is open without charge; the pagoda is viewed from outside, as its interior is not accessible to visitors.
The shrine has gathered a second kind of visitor in recent years. The mayor of Saku publicly linked it to the animated film Your Name in 2016, and because director Makoto Shinkai comes from nearby Koumi, fans have associated the shrine's kagura stage with a scene from the film. The connection is a matter of local enthusiasm rather than official confirmation, but it brings a steady trickle of film travelers to a site that might otherwise stay quiet.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Nagano
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Shinkaisansha Shrine Three-Story Pagoda
- [ Matsumoto Castle & Kamikochi Hiking Tours ]
Q&A
- Why is there a Buddhist pagoda at a Shinto shrine?
- For most of Japanese history Buddhism and Shinto were practiced together, and Buddhist buildings often stood on shrine land. The pagoda is a survivor of that older arrangement, which the government forcibly unwound in the Meiji period.
- Can I go inside the pagoda?
- No. The interior is not open. Visitors view the structure from the surrounding grounds, which are freely accessible during daylight.
- How do I reach it?
- It is about two kilometers east of Usuda Station on the JR Koumi Line, in the Taguchi district of Saku City. Most visitors arrive by car, as bus and rail service to the area is limited.
- When was the pagoda actually built?
- An inscription on its wind bells gives 1515. Shrine tradition mentions a far older origin in 849 for an earlier pagoda, but the building standing today is the sixteenth-century one.
- What else on the grounds is worth seeing?
- The East Main Shrine, also an Important Cultural Property, and the carved mitamashiro-ishi stone with its 1358 date. The old cedars along the approach are themselves striking.
Basic Information
| Name | Shinkai Sansha Shrine Three-Storied Pagoda (Shinkai Sansha Jinja Sanjū-no-tō) |
|---|---|
| Location | Taguchi, Saku City, Nagano Prefecture |
| Designation | Important Cultural Property (designated 28 August 1907) |
| Date | 1515 (Eishō 12), late Muromachi period |
| Form | Three-bay three-storied pagoda; kokera-buki shingled roof; about 20 m tall |
| Count | One structure |
| Owner | Shinkai Sansha Shrine |
| Access | About 2 km east of Usuda Station, JR Koumi Line; precinct open without charge (exterior viewing only) |
References
- National Database of Designated Cultural Properties, Agency for Cultural Affairs
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/970
- Cultural Heritage Online (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/193630
- Shinkai Sansha Shrine (Saku City official tourism page)
- https://www.city.saku.nagano.jp/kanko/kanko/spot/meisho_shiseki/shinkaisanshajinji.html
- Shinkai Sansha Shrine (Saku Regional Union tourism guide)
- https://www.areasaku.or.jp/kankou/spot/21649.html
Last verified: 2026.06.04