Zozan Shrine Main Hall

What the Zozan Shrine Main Hall Is

Zozan Shrine Main Hall (象山神社本殿, Zōzan Jinja Honden) is the 1938 inner sanctuary of Zozan Shrine in Matsushiro-machi, Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2005.

This is the building that houses the enshrined spirit of Sakuma Shozan, finished in the same year the shrine was founded. It is a three-bay Nagare-zukuri hall with a Dōban-buki copper roof and a footprint of 33 square meters. The shrine describes it as a Momoyama-style flowing-roof sanctuary built entirely of hinoki cypress.

Visitors cannot walk up to it. The worship hall and prayer hall stand in front, and the main hall sits behind them, joined through the prayer hall. What you can see of the Zozan Shrine Main Hall is its roof and parts of its frame, so it helps to know what to look for.

Why It Was Registered as a Model of Form

Zozan Shrine Main Hall carries registration number 20-0221. It was registered on December 26, 2005, under the criterion of buildings that serve as a model of form.

Nagare-zukuri, the flowing style, is the most common layout for Shinto main halls in Japan: the front slope of the roof keeps going past the wall to cover a porch. Small shrines usually settle for a single bay across the front. Here the builders chose three, giving the sanctuary a scale suited to a prefectural-rank shrine.

The frame sorts itself by column shape. Round columns carry the inner chamber where the deity resides; square columns carry the front Hisashi aisle. The brackets are Mitsudo-gumi three-block sets with an extra bearing piece on top, tie beams run level between chamber and aisle, and the gable is finished with a Kaerumata frog-leg strut on a Kōryō rainbow beam.

Under the eaves the rafters are doubled in two tiers and set closely spaced. It is labor-intensive work, and it gives the roof edge its visible thickness.

A veranda wraps all four sides, yet there are no Wakishōji screens closing off its ends. Those panels were a favorite place for carvers in Edo-period sanctuaries, and leaving them out was a choice. The Agency for Cultural Affairs sums up the design as traditional in form and old-fashioned in its restraint.

Shozan argued for Western science and technology; the hall built in his honor sticks closely to a much older architectural grammar. That consistency is a fair reading of why the Zozan Shrine Main Hall was valued as a model rather than as a showpiece.

Seeing the Zozan Shrine Main Hall

From the front, the worship hall roof hides almost all of it. Walk around to the side of the worship hall and look back at an angle for the Zozan Shrine Main Hall roof.

You are looking for the long forward sweep of the flowing roof and the double row of rafter ends at the eaves. Whether you can make out the difference between square front columns and round inner ones depends on where you stand, but it is worth trying: the change of section marks the line between the porch and the sanctuary.

From the gable end, the rainbow beam and frog-leg strut are easier to pick out.

Visiting the Zozan Shrine Main Hall

Zozan Shrine Main Hall cannot be entered and the interior is not shown. Prayers are offered in front of the worship hall, and the main hall is viewed from within the grounds at no charge.

For the roof profile, an oblique view from either the east or west side of the worship hall works better than the frontal view. Directions and reception hours are on the Zozan Shrine page.