Saijo Inari Myokyoji

A Buddhist temple with a torii gate

Saijo Inari Myokyoji (最上稲荷山妙教寺, Saijō Inarisan Myōkyō-ji) is a Nichiren Buddhist temple in Takamatsu Inari, Kita Ward, Okayama City, founded according to temple tradition in 785, and 33 of its buildings, including the main hall, the Reioden sanctuary and the small shrines of the Seventy-Seven Subsidiary Shrines, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2009. Most people simply call it Saijo Inari; locally it is also known as Takamatsu Inari. It is sometimes counted, with Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto and Toyokawa Inari in Aichi, among the three great Inari sites of Japan.

The object of worship is Saijoi Kyoo Daibosatsu, a deity who personifies the blessings of the Lotus Sutra, shown as a goddess riding a white fox with a sheaf of rice on her left shoulder and a sickle in her right hand. The temple says that when the Meiji government forced Shinto and Buddhism apart, Saijo Inari was specially allowed to keep its combined form of worship. That is why a Buddhist temple has a red torii 27.5 metres tall at its approach and a main sanctuary that looks like a shrine.

The temple's founding legend begins in 752, when the monk Hoon Daishi prayed for the recovery of Empress Koken on a great flat rock called Hachijoiwa, halfway up Mount Ryuo, and the deity appeared to him riding a white fox. In 785 Emperor Kanmu, cured in turn by the monk's prayers, is said to have ordered a temple, Ryuozan Jinguji, built on the present site. Its halls were lost in 1582 during Hashiba Hideyoshi's siege of nearby Bitchu Takamatsu Castle, which he took by flooding; only the deity's image survived, hidden under the rock. In 1601 the new local lord, of the Hanabusa family, invited the priest Nichien from the Kanto region to revive the site, and it was renamed Inarisan Myokyoji.

The documentary record tells a later story than the legend. An article by the Okayama City Board of Education notes that a prefectural gazetteer dates the founding of a small hall named Myokyoji to 1742, that the temple is absent from a register of temples drawn up in 1634, and that it appears in a register of 1786 as a branch of Myokenji in Kyoto. On that evidence, the article concludes, the temple took on its full form in the mid-18th century.

Three terraces on a hillside

The grounds spread across the southern foot of Mount Ryuo, and the temple describes them in three tiers. On the central terrace stands the present main sanctuary, Reikoden, completed in 1979, where prayer rituals are held. Up and to the right lies what the temple calls its cultural-property zone: the former main sanctuary, Reioden, surrounded by the Seventy-Seven Subsidiary Shrines. Below and to the right are the main Buddhist hall (Konpon Daido), the guest hall and the Kanshotei garden, used for memorial services.

The inner sanctuary of the Reioden was rebuilt in 1741 and is the oldest timber building on the site. When the new main sanctuary went up, the old one was moved bodily, by the house-hauling method, to where it stands now. That innermost building was designated a cultural property by Okayama City in 2004; the Kyooden, worship hall and front hall joined to it are on the national register. Around it stand the Seventy-Seven Subsidiary Shrines, small sanctuaries for the attendant deities who serve the main deity, including the Enbiki shrine visited by people praying for good relationships.

Few of these buildings have stayed put. Most of the Reioden complex and the subsidiary shrines were moved in 1979 to make way for the new sanctuary, and in 2006 the main hall was relocated and the guest hall renovated. The city's article argues that, for all the moving, the temple's unusual identity as a Nichiren Inari site produced a group of richly decorated buildings and a townscape found nowhere else in the region.

Thirty-three registered buildings and their carpenters

The 33 buildings were placed on the national register together on 2009/01/08, under registration numbers 33-0170 to 33-0202. They fall into three groups. The temple side includes the main hall, the guest hall and priests' quarters, the Kanshoken annex, the drum tower and corridor, the Hokokaku, the Omizuya purification pavilion, the main gate, the bell tower and the Niomon gate. The Reioden contributes its Kyooden, worship hall and front hall. The rest are 19 of the small Tenno shrines, the sacred horse stable, and the Seishoko Hall for the warlord Kato Kiyomasa, set apart at the south-eastern corner of the grounds.

Their dates run for about a century, from the bell tower of 1862 to the Niomon gate of 1957. Most were built in the Meiji and Taisho eras, when the temple was growing fast and building or rebuilding on a large scale.

The Okayama City article is particularly interested in who built them. The Reioden's inner sanctuary was the work of Kizu carpenters from Harima; the main hall, the three front buildings of the Reioden and the five-bay Gosha Tennosha shrine were built under Aoyama Choshichi, a master carpenter from Nagoya. Local carpenters, among them Asakusaya Kojiro and Asakusaya Shinzo, signed several of the later shrines, and the article reads the group as a record of Nagoya craftsmen and the local men who learned from them. The Niomon gate is something else entirely: a reinforced-concrete gate designed by Tokyo University professor Kishida Hideto from an idea by the Buddhist archaeologist Ishida Mosaku.

The great torii of 1972 and the present main sanctuary of 1979 are not on the register. The Kanshotei garden was designated a Place of Scenic Beauty by Okayama Prefecture in 2026, according to the temple.

Festivals through the year

New Year is by far the busiest season, with prayer services from New Year's Day to January 15; the temple expects more than 600,000 visitors over the first three days alone. Its three principal festivals are the bean-throwing ceremony at Setsubun in early February, the summer festival of the dragon kings on the third Sunday of July, and the fire festival on December 1 and 2, when last year's talismans are burned.

The Seishoko festival is held at the Seishoko Hall on the third Thursday of May. On September 15, the annual festival of the main deity, the cave under Hachijoiwa and the Kanshotei garden are open free of charge. The first of every month is a day for forging a bond with the deity, and on the seventh of each month except January a priest leads visitors around the shrines for good and bad relationships.

Opening hours and getting there

There is no charge to enter the grounds. The prayer reception is open from 5:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and prayer rituals in the main sanctuary are held at 6:00 a.m. and then every hour from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The only paid area is the Kanshotei garden together with the interior of the guest hall, open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; admission is from 300 yen for adults and from 200 yen for students and groups, and free for children of primary-school age and younger. It closes on some days for temple events.

The registered Reioden buildings, the subsidiary shrines, the bell tower and the gates are all seen from outside. The Reioden is sometimes used for private prayer services by reservation, but its interiors are not open to the public. The temple's website does not prohibit photographing the buildings from outside, but keep clear of services and prayers in progress.

The nearest station is Bitchu-Takamatsu on the JR Momotaro (Kibi) Line. The temple gives the distance as about 2 kilometres, around 5 minutes by taxi; a walking guide by the Okayama Prefecture Tourism Federation puts the shortest walking route at about 3.2 kilometres, or some 40 minutes. A taxi from the west exit of JR Okayama Station takes about 20 minutes. A free shuttle bus runs on weekends and holidays in some seasons, so check the temple's notices before you go.

By car, the temple is about 5 kilometres (10 minutes) from the Okayama-Soja interchange on the Okayama Expressway and about 7 kilometres (12 minutes) from the ETC-only Kibi Smart interchange on the Sanyo Expressway. Private car parks line the approach, and there are 4 spaces for disabled drivers inside the grounds. From the main car park the approach climbs about 600 metres to the Niomon gate. The address is 712 Takamatsu Inari, Kita Ward, Okayama City; telephone 086-287-3700.