Zozan Shrine Treasure Hall

The Small Building West of the Path

Zozan Shrine Treasure Hall (象山神社宝殿, Zōzan-jinja Hōden) is a storehouse standing towards the west of the central precinct of Zozan Shrine in Matsushiro, Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture, built in 1938 and entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 26 December 2005.

Two words in that sentence sound almost identical and mean different things. Hōden (宝殿) is this building, a treasury. Honden (本殿) is the sanctuary at the rear where the deity resides, a separate registered structure. Japanese shrine vocabulary uses 宝殿 for a building holding sacred regalia and ritual implements; the term describes the building type rather than any particular inventory, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs record says nothing about what is kept inside.

The shrine was founded in 1938 to honour Sakuma Shōzan (1811-1864), the Matsushiro domain retainer who studied Western gunnery and science and taught Katsu Kaishū, Yoshida Shōin and Sakamoto Ryōma. Planning had begun in 1913, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, under Yokota Hideo, a Matsushiro man who had become head of the Great Court of Cassation. The whole precinct, treasure hall included, went up at once on the site of Sakuma's family home and was completed for the founding ceremony on 3 November 1938.

Six buildings from that single campaign carry registration numbers today. The treasure hall is 20-0223.

Registered for a Different Reason

Registered Tangible Cultural Properties are entered under one of three criteria, and the treasure hall was not registered under the same one as the sanctuary. The main hall qualified as a model or standard of design. The treasure hall qualified as a structure contributing to the historic landscape of the nation.

That distinction is easy to skate past, and it changes how the building should be looked at. Nobody is claiming this is an exemplary piece of shrine architecture in isolation. The claim is that it belongs to a place, and that removing it would damage something larger than itself.

Physically it is modest: a single-storey timber building of roughly 30 square metres, facing east, under a kirizuma gabled roof of copper plate. It sits on a podium of dressed stone blocks. Square posts rise from that podium and carry funahijiki, boat-shaped bracket arms whose gently curved profile is the simplest bracketing a Japanese carpenter uses.

The walls repay attention. Boarding runs up to waist height; above that the surface is white shikkui lime plaster. Both side elevations carry tate-renji-mado, windows filled with closely set vertical slats. The Agency's description ends by noting that despite its small scale, the building shows care in the handling of its ventilation openings and in the form of its veranda and steps.

Ventilation openings are the giveaway. A storehouse for textiles, paper, lacquer and metalwork lives or dies by air movement, and a carpenter who bothers to make the vents part of the composition rather than punching holes where they are needed is designing, not just building. The same goes for the vertical slat windows, which admit air and diffused light while keeping out driving rain and, to a degree, prying hands.

Finding It, and What Stands Nearby

Most visitors walk past the treasure hall without registering it. It is small, it faces east onto the middle of the precinct rather than onto the main approach, and the eye goes to the worship hall ahead and the bronze statues by the torii. Slow down at the centre of the grounds and look to the west side.

Standing in front of it, three things reward a minute of attention. The joint where boarding meets plaster, a horizontal line drawn at exactly the height where rain splash stops. The slat windows, best seen when low sun rakes across them and each slat throws its own shadow. And the steps and veranda, which the registration file singles out and which are noticeably more considered than a purely functional shed would need.

Close by, also facing east and also on the west side of the precinct, is the ex-voto hall, a companion registered on the same day under the same landscape criterion. It has an irimoya hip-and-gable roof, deep eaves carried on projecting purlins, open sides above waist-height boarding, and a latticed gable screen. It doubles as a rest shelter, so you can sit there and look back at the treasure hall.

Further into the grounds are the two relocated buildings connected with Sakuma himself: Kōgitei, the annexe of the villa where he lived under house arrest for nine years, moved here in 1978 and designated by Nagano City; and En'utei, the teahouse from his last Kyoto lodging. Near the birthplace plot is Kokoro-no-ike, a pond garden registered as a national Monument in July 2008 and fed by the sensuiro channels that ran through the samurai quarter of Matsushiro.

Practical notes. There is no admission fee for the precinct, and no charge to look at the treasure hall from outside; the interior is not open to visitors. The shrine office handles amulets, prayers and seal stamps between 9:30 and 16:00, and the number is 026-278-2461. Sources differ on when the gates open and close, so call before planning an early or late visit. From Nagano Station, Alpico buses for Matsushiro leave stand 3 at the Zenkōji exit and take about thirty minutes to Matsushiro Hachijūni Ginkō-mae, five to ten minutes on foot from the shrine. By car it is roughly 1.8 kilometres from Nagano IC on the Jōshin-etsu Expressway, with a small car park by the torii and a larger one to the south. Photography is normal in the open precinct; follow posted notices and pause during ceremonies.

Matsushiro is a half-day town. The Sanada Treasure Museum, the Sanada residence and the domain school Bunbu Gakkō all sit within a ten-minute walk, and the street pattern between them is still the one the Sanada laid out.