Zenkoji Temple Niomon Gate

The gate at the start of the Zenkoji approach

The Zenkoji Temple Niomon Gate (善光寺仁王門, Zenkō-ji Niōmon) in Motoyoshi-cho, Nagano City, is an eight-pillared Hakkyakumon gate rebuilt in 1918, facing south over the temple's approach, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 17, 2020.

It stands among the houses and shops of the temple town, and through it the stone-paved Nakamise street runs on toward the Main Hall. Of all the Zenkoji buildings, it is the first one visitors walk through. The plaque on the front carries the temple's mountain name, Jogakuzan.

According to the temple, the first Niomon was built in 1752 and burned down twice, one of those losses following the great Zenkoji earthquake of 1847. The present gate was rebuilt in 1918 of zelkova wood, paid for by believers across Japan led by Nagata Hyotaro of Yamagata village.

Form and carving of the Zenkoji Niomon Gate

The gate is three bays wide with a single central passage, and its gabled roof is covered in copper sheet (Dōban-buki). Front and back, the eaves rise in a gentle curved gable, the Noki-karahafu. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a building area of 100 square meters; the temple gives a height of about 14 meters, a width of about 13 meters and a depth of about 7 meters.

The carvings change subject from one face to another. The beam ends above the posts show lions on the front and baku, the dream-eating creature of Chinese lore, on the sides, and a dragon fills each gable. The database also records a repair in 1977.

The Nio guardians by Takamura Koun and Yonehara Unkai

A pair of Nio guardian kings stands in the bays on either side of the passage. They were carved by Takamura Koun and Yonehara Unkai, two of the best-known sculptors of modern Japan. The temple points out that their placement is the reverse of the usual arrangement: as you face the gate, the closed-mouthed Ungyo (617.2 centimeters overall) is on the right and the open-mouthed Agyo (595.1 centimeters) on the left.

The carving drew on Western methods. The sculptors scaled the figures up from small models using a pointing technique, and the proportions of head to body and the treatment of the muscles break with earlier Japanese Nio. The statues were left unpainted, so they were the pale color of fresh wood when new; the dark tone they have now is the work of time. A recent survey found that the figures stand without any fixing, held up only by the balance of their own weight.

Behind the guardians stand a three-faced Daikokuten (367.7 centimeters) on the right and Sanbo Kojin (428.6 centimeters) on the left, also by Koun and Unkai. Sanbo Kojin protects against fire, a pointed choice for a gate whose predecessors were lost to flames. The older Nio statues, which spent the years before 1918 in the open air, now stand outside Iiyama Station.

Why the Zenkoji Niomon Gate was registered

The Zenkoji Niomon Gate was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The agency's description stresses where it stands, on the approach to the Main Hall in the middle of the temple town, and calls it a weighty gate that gives shape to the entrance of an ancient temple.

Its 1918 date is part of the point rather than a weakness. By placing a gate with modern sculpture at the start of the road to an early-eighteenth-century hall, Zenkoji set some two hundred years of building side by side along a single walk.

Visiting the Zenkoji Niomon Gate

The Zenkoji Niomon Gate sits on the public approach, so walking through it and looking at the guardians is free at any hour. Visitors cannot go up into the gate. The Nio stand in the side bays, and you look up at them from the central passage.

The quarter-scale models used to carve the guardians are on show in the Zenkoji History Museum in the Nihon Churei-den, west of the Main Hall, which you enter with the Main Hall inner sanctuary ticket. At the Setsubun festival on February 3, the procession of demons and lucky-year walkers sets off from this gate toward the Main Hall. Zenkoji treats its grounds as private land, and photographs for news or publication need the temple's permission. Directions and tickets for the whole temple are on the Zenkoji Temple page.