Saidaiji Kosodo Hall

The hall of the founder

Saidaiji Kosodo Hall is a single-storey Buddhist hall in the northwest corner of the Saidaiji precinct in Higashi-ku, Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, dated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to around 1780 and entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2019. It faces south, three bays square, under a pyramidal Hōgyō-zukuri roof of Hongawarabuki. A veranda with a Kōran balustrade wraps the front and both flanks.

The name identifies who is inside. Kōso means the great patriarch, and for a temple of the Shingon school that is Kūkai, known posthumously as Kōbō Daishi. The building is also called the Mieidō, the hall of the portrait image. Saidaiji itself is the head-ranked Kōyasan Shingon temple of Kinryōzan, and this hall is where the school's founder is honoured rather than its principal object of worship.

Its footprint is 44 square meters, which makes it one of the smaller buildings in the precinct. What it lacks in bulk it makes up for in the care given to proportion.

Two dates, and why both are given

The registration record puts the building at about 1780, the ninth year of the An'ei era. The temple's own account is longer: it holds that a hall was first raised here in the Enpō era, between 1673 and 1675, and that the structure standing today is the product of a major rebuilding in 1780. The temple also records that the hall originally stood nearer the sutra repository before being moved to its present corner.

Both accounts can be read together rather than against each other. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates fabric; the temple records institutional history. Visitors to Saidaiji Kosodo Hall should simply be aware that the 1780 figure describes the building as it now survives, not the first hall on the spot.

Inside, the seated image of Kōbō Daishi carries an inscription naming its maker as Kichiemon-no-jō of Tenma in Osaka and dating it to 1675. The miniature shrine housing it is thought to be of much the same moment. The sculpture is therefore older than the hall around it, which is a common pattern at long-lived temples and a useful reminder that a building and its contents rarely share a birthday.

Registration was granted under the criterion of serving as a model of design. The assessors were describing a hall that gets its dignity from discipline, not from carving.

What to look for on site

Look up under the eaves first. The bracketing is degumi, a single-stepped form, with Kaerumata frog-leg struts between the Kumimono. The eaves project deeply and sit low, which is what gives Saidaiji Kosodo Hall its flattened, settled profile from the approach. The temple notes that the curved supporting boards behind the brackets are carved throughout, a flourish held to the one place where it will not disturb the overall calm.

The interior is a single room floored in Tatami, with a Shumidan altar platform at the back. Above it the ceiling is a double-coved coffered type, its grid subdivided into small squares, the most formal ceiling treatment available to a hall of this scale. Set that against the plain plastered walls and the restraint reads as a choice rather than a budget.

Outside, the ridge-end tiles are worth a moment. The temple attributes the Onigawara here to Yamamoto Hanjūrō of Aboshi, the same craftsman credited with those on the sutra repository, so the two buildings carry a family resemblance at roof level even though they differ in plan. The plaque over the entrance is traditionally ascribed to the priest Sassa Nankoku.

The vocabulary throughout is Wayō, the native Japanese manner, without the Chinese-derived detailing that dominates the temple's two great gates. Walking from the Niō gate to this corner of the precinct is a useful lesson in how differently two Edo-period carpenters could work on one site.

Visiting Saidaiji Kosodo Hall

The precinct is open around the clock, so the exterior of Saidaiji Kosodo Hall can be viewed at any hour at no charge. Movement through the grounds is restricted during the Saidaiji Eyō in February.

The temple's published paid admission covers the main hall and the Gooshoden: 500 yen for adults, 200 yen for children, received from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with 100 yen off for parties of ten or more. No separate charge is listed for this hall, and no opening hours are published for its interior, so ask at the temple office if you hope to see the altar. The amulet counter runs from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Photographing the exterior is unrestricted in ordinary circumstances. Nothing is published about interior photography, so read the notices on site or ask before shooting indoors.

From Saidaiji Station on the JR Akō Line the walk takes about ten minutes. Buses from the Okayama Tenmaya Bus Centre reach Saidaiji Bus Centre in around 30 minutes, then it is ten minutes on foot. The temple has a car park within the grounds.