Honkoji Temple Bell Tower

A Bell Tower Rebuilt in 1886

Honkoji Shoro (本光寺鐘楼, also written Honkō-ji Shōrō), the bell tower of Honkoji temple in Sawane Kagomachi, Sado City, Niigata Prefecture, was rebuilt in 1886 and entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 7 March 2008. It stands northeast of the main hall, its ridge running east to west, and covers a footprint of just 6.5 square metres.

Temple tradition accounts for the date. An earthquake in 1762 is said to have destroyed the earlier tower, and the rebuilding did not come until the nineteenth year of Meiji, more than a century later. By 1886 Japan had a national railway programme, brick post offices and Western-trained engineers. None of that reached this corner of the compound. The carpenter who put up the tower worked entirely in the inherited idiom, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs summary calls it a standard open-sided bell tower in the traditional manner.

That plainness is the point of the listing. Honkoji Shoro was registered under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country, rather than as an exceptional piece of design. It earns its place by being a well-made ordinary thing, of a kind that has largely disappeared elsewhere.

How the Small Frame Is Put Together

The type is hō ikken fukihanachi: one bay square, open on all four sides, with no walls at all. The bell hangs in full view and the structure has nowhere to hide its joinery.

Four square pillars rise from a low masonry platform. They are set with uchikorobi, a slight inward lean at the top that steadies the frame visually and structurally, a refinement easy to miss until you sight up one corner against the sky. Two levels of penetrating ties lock them together, the koshinuki at hip height and the uchinorinuki higher up, and above these run a head tie cut with the curved profile of a kōryō beam and a flat daiwa plate.

On top sit the bracket complexes. These are hira-mitsudo, three-block sets arranged in a single plane, the most economical of the standard bracket types; between the pillars the intercolumnar brackets repeat the same form with kibana nosings added at the ends. The gable carries a kōryō beam with a bottle-shaped taiheizuka strut above it. The eaves are futanoki shigedaruki, doubled and closely rafted, which gives the small roof its depth of shadow.

Nothing here is showy. Set against the temple gate a few paces away, which was built forty years earlier with Zen-style columns and steeply curved beams, the bell tower reads as the quieter member of the pair.

The Bell in a Mining Port

Sawane was never a farming village. The district grew as the port for the Tsurushi silver mine, opened in 1542 in the hills directly above, and the bay below the mine filled with the boats bringing in charcoal, candles and rice for the workings. Honkoji itself spent part of its early history up there, at a place called Tsurushi Jūhachininba, before moving down to the shore road in 1781. In 2024 the Tsurushi workings were inscribed by UNESCO as part of the Sado Island Gold Mines.

A temple bell in such a place was a public instrument as much as a religious one, marking the hours for a population that worked to a schedule. The present tower has itself been moved: in 1973, when the prefectural road was widened, it was relocated within the grounds along with the gate and the wall.

Practical Notes for Visitors

The bell tower stands inside the temple grounds rather than on the street, so it is seen from within the compound, beyond the registered gate. Honkoji is an active Jodo Shinshu parish temple with no admission charge and no fixed opening hours, and the grounds are not laid out for sightseeing. Walking in quietly to look at the exterior is generally accepted; anyone wanting to photograph at length, or to see the main hall inside, should telephone the temple first and avoid days when funerals or memorial services are being held. The bell is not available for visitors to strike.

Getting there takes about forty minutes by car from Ryotsu Port, the arrival point for ferries and jetfoils from Niigata. The Honsen bus line between Ryotsu and Aikawa runs along the road in front of the temple; Sawane Gakko-mae is the closest stop. Aikawa, with the main gold mine sites and the Kirariumu Sado visitor centre, lies roughly fifteen minutes further north.