Zaizen Family Treasure Tower

A Stone Pagoda Commissioned by Someone Still Alive

Zaizenke Hōtō (財前家宝塔, also written Zaizen-ke Hōtō), the stone pagoda standing at 1609 Ono, Ōta, Kitsuki City, Oita Prefecture, was raised in 1321 and designated an Important Cultural Property on 20 March 1954. It belongs to the regional type known as the Kunisaki-tō, and at a total height of 2.97 metres it is the largest of the hundred or so stone monuments crowding the hillside plot around it.

The inscription cut into its body settles two questions at once and raises a third. It opens with a formula of respectful address and the statement that one stone pagoda is hereby erected, then asks for peace in the present world and enlightenment in the next for all sentient beings. That phrasing marks the monument as a gyakushu-tō, a memorial commissioned by a living person for their own future repose rather than raised over a grave. Local tradition has long identified the pagoda as the tomb of an ancestor styled Zaizen Mino-no-kami, but the wording carved on the stone points away from a burial marker.

The date is given as the third year of Genō, which corresponds to 1321. The sexagenary characters that follow, read kanoe-tori, do not match: the year 1321 falls on kanoto-tori in the sixty-year cycle. Researchers treat the discrepancy as a carving error by the stonemason. The Agency for Cultural Affairs transcribes the inscription as it appears on the stone rather than silently correcting it, which is why the database entry and the calendar disagree.

What a Kunisaki-tō Is, and Why This One Carries National Protection

An ordinary Japanese hōtō sets a rounded body directly on a square base. The Kunisaki-tō inserts a pedestal between the two, usually an inverted-lotus course, sometimes a lotus seat, sometimes both stacked. That single interruption changes the whole silhouette, lifting the body clear of the ground and giving the type its characteristic slenderness. Around five hundred survive, roughly ninety percent of them on the Kunisaki Peninsula and its immediate hinterland.

The Zaizen pagoda shows the elements clearly. The base is worked with two panels per face, each carved with a koma opening, the cusped recess used on altar plinths and reliquary stands. Above it sits an unusually tall inverted-lotus pedestal, and the height of that course is much of what makes the monument read as large even before you measure it.

Designation in 1954 placed it alongside two other monuments in the same Ōta district of Kitsuki: a five-storey pagoda associated with the Tahara family bearing a date of 1339, and another Kunisaki-tō of 1330 at Ishimaru. All three were listed on the same day. What separates the Zaizen pagoda within that group is the combination of scale, a securely legible date, and an inscription long enough to establish the purpose of the commission. Dated stonework of the Kamakura period is not rare on this peninsula, but stonework that also states why it was made is scarcer.

The family behind it were local landholders. The Zaizen are said to descend from the Ki clan and held influence across the Kunisaki district through the medieval centuries. Their cemetery, rather than the single designated pagoda, is what the prefecture protects as a historic site.

Reading the Whole Hillside, Not Just the One Stone

The designated pagoda stands on a raised platform with two companion Kunisaki-tō, the three of them lined up as a group, and the visual point of the arrangement is comparison. Set side by side, differences in the height of the pedestal course, the swell of the body, and the length of the finial become obvious in a way no single example can convey.

Then widen the view. Scattered across the plot are roughly a hundred and one stone monuments in total: fifteen Kunisaki-tō, two hōkyōintō reliquary pagodas, around seventy five-ringed gorintō, and fourteen flat stone stelae called itabi. They span the Kamakura period through the Nanbokuchō era, which means the site records perhaps a century and a half of one family's commemorative practice in a single field of view. Very few places in Japan let you watch a lineage's stonework change across generations without moving your feet.

Practical notes matter here more than at a temple. This is an outdoor cemetery still connected to a family, listed by Kitsuki City with a private individual as owner, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs database leaves the owner field blank. There is no gate, no ticket window, and no fixed hours, and there is also no staff to ask. Visitors are expected to behave as they would in any working burial ground: stay on the paths between the stones, touch nothing, and keep voices down. Photography for personal purposes draws no posted objection, and the low, raking light of early morning or late afternoon does far more for the carved koma panels than midday sun.

The Ōta district sits inland at the middle of the peninsula and was once described as an island cut off by land, which is precisely why so much of its stonework survived undisturbed. A car is close to essential. Kitsuki is the nearest station on the JR Nichirin line, and Oita Airport lies on the peninsula's eastern coast. Anyone building a day around stone should link this site with the Tahara five-storey pagoda and the Ishimaru pagoda nearby, since all three lie within the same district.