Kumata Shrine Main Hall (First Hall)

A Nara sanctuary that travelled to Osaka

Three vermilion halls stand in a row behind the worship hall of Kumata Shrine, in the Hirano district of southeastern Osaka. Seen from the front, the one on the left is the First Hall. By the date carved into its timbers it is the youngest of the three, yet it has the longest history of movement behind it. The building was first raised in Nara as part of Kasuga Taisha, the great shrine at the foot of Mount Mikasa, and it was carried to Osaka more than three hundred years ago.

The First Hall is a small, single-bay structure built in the kasuga-zukuri style and roofed in layered cypress bark. Kasuga-zukuri is the sanctuary form that originated at Kasuga Taisha: a compact building one bay wide, with a gabled roof and a curved canopy projecting forward over the steps, usually finished in vermilion. It became one of the standard models for Shinto architecture across Japan, and the Kumata hall is a direct example of the type, having once belonged to the shrine that gave the style its name.

Why a relocated building was designated

Kasuga Taisha renews its sanctuaries on a fixed cycle, a practice known as shikinen zōtai. When the main halls are rebuilt, the dismantled timbers are not thrown away. Old buildings are granted to other shrines, where they are reassembled and continue in use. The First Hall at Kumata is one of these gifts.

It was originally the Third Hall of Kasuga Taisha's main sanctuary, built in 1690 (Genroku 3). In 1711 (Shōtoku 1), when Kumata Shrine's own First Hall had decayed past the point of repair, the dismantled Kasuga hall was received and rebuilt on the site, where it has remained ever since. Because almost nothing was changed in later centuries, it keeps the form of a late seventeenth-century Kasuga sanctuary with rare accuracy. Among the surviving former Kasuga halls whose origins can be clearly documented, it counts as one of the oldest.

The building was designated an Important Cultural Property on 28 January 1977. The designation also covers a single munafuda, the inscribed ridge tag that records details of the construction.

What to look for on a visit

The three halls reward comparison, because they show two different shrine forms set against each other. The First Hall (1690) and the Third Hall (1513) are both single-bay kasuga-zukuri, narrow and tall with the forward-leaning canopy. The Second Hall, in the centre, is wider: a three-bay nagare-zukuri structure of 1513, the most widespread of all shrine styles, in which the front slope of the roof sweeps down over the approach. Standing before them, the difference between a one-bay and a three-bay front is easy to read.

The two halls dated 1513 are among the oldest standing buildings anywhere in the city of Osaka, which makes the trio as a whole a compressed lesson in shrine carpentry from the early sixteenth to the late seventeenth century. The halls sit behind a low fence within the inner precinct, so the usual view is from the worship area in front of them rather than from close range.

Each hall houses a different deity. The First Hall enshrines Susanoo, the storm god of Japanese myth; the Second holds the three Kumano deities including Izanami; and the Third is dedicated to Izanagi. The pairing of Susanoo with the Kumano gods reflects the shrine's layered past as a Gion sanctuary that later absorbed the cult of Kumano.

The town around the shrine

Kumata Shrine is also known for something found nowhere else in Japan: a surviving renga-sho, a hall built for the composition of linked verse. Renga is a collaborative poetic form in which participants take turns adding stanzas. The practice faded after the Meiji period but was later revived here, and a linked-verse gathering, the Hirano Hōraku Renga, is now held at the shrine every month.

In mid-July the quiet precinct fills for the Hirano Danjiri Festival, held from the 11th to the 14th. Nine danjiri, heavy wooden festival floats, are pulled through the streets, and the procession draws crowds said to exceed three hundred thousand people over the four days. The high point is the night when the floats are hauled into the shrine grounds, an event large enough that the nearby national highway is closed to traffic.

The shrine stands at the edge of old Hirano, a merchant town that was once ringed by a defensive moat and ran much of its own affairs during the Edo period on the strength of its cotton trade. A stretch of the moat survives on the east side of the precinct. A short walk away is Dainenbutsu-ji, the head temple of the Yūzū Nenbutsu school of Buddhism, and the small neighbourhood temples and lanes of Hirano repay an unhurried hour or two on foot.