Minase Shrine Main Hall

A Palace Sanctuary Moved to a Shrine

Minase Shrine Main Hall (水無瀬神宮本殿, Minase Jingū Honden) is an early Edo-period sanctuary at Minase Shrine in Hirose, Shimamoto Town, Mishima District, Osaka Prefecture, and was added to the national register of Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2016. It is the innermost building on the grounds and houses the shrine's three deities, the emperors Go-Toba, Tsuchimikado and Juntoku.

Both the shrine and Shimamoto Town say that the hall was once the Naishidokoro of Empress Meishō, who reigned from 1629 to 1643. The Naishidokoro was the building inside the imperial palace that held the sacred mirror, one of the three imperial regalia. A 2007 bulletin of the Osaka architects' association adds that the hall was reassembled here during the Kan'ei era using timbers from the old Naishidokoro of the Kyoto palace. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates it simply to the early Edo period, between 1615 and 1661, which fits the tradition.

No document recording the transfer appears in the published sources, so the palace origin of the Minase Shrine Main Hall is best read as a tradition rather than an established fact.

Plain Design, Real Dignity

The Minase Shrine Main Hall was registered on August 1, 2016 (registration no. 27-0642) under the criterion of buildings that serve as models of form. Shimamoto Town points to its origin in early Edo palace architecture as the reason for that judgment.

The agency's own summary describes a shrine building whose plain design still carries a sense of dignity. Carving is almost absent. The beams rest on simple boat-shaped bracket arms (funa-hijiki), and the eaves use two tiers of closely spaced rafters (futanoki shige-daruki). The quality of the hall shows in the density of that eave work rather than in ornament.

As a shrine sanctuary, Minase's Main Hall has an unusual profile. Its hip-and-gable roof (irimoya-zukuri) belongs to a different family from the nagare-zukuri and kasuga-zukuri forms most common at Japanese shrines, which sits comfortably with the story that it began life as a palace building.

What to Look For

The Minase Shrine Main Hall measures three bays by two and has a building area of 89 square meters. It faces west. A veranda wraps around all four sides and ends at the back in low screen walls (waki-shoji). A raised wooden platform (hamayuka) sits in front, and plank doors open on the front and sides. Inside, the hall is divided into an inner and an outer sanctuary; the outer room has a coved ceiling with a fine lattice grid.

The roof has been changed several times. According to the shrine, it was originally tiled, was re-covered in cypress bark in 1929 and was clad in copper sheet in 1974. The roof you see today is not the material the building had when it stood in the palace.

The base is worth noticing too. Shimamoto Town notes that the Minase Shrine Main Hall stands on a sill set on a rounded plaster plinth (kamebara), with a drip channel around it. The enclosure is walled on three sides by five tiled earthen wall sections, with a gate in the middle of the rear wall, so the hall sits at the center of its own walled court behind the Worship Hall.

Visiting the Minase Shrine Main Hall

The Minase Shrine Main Hall is a working sanctuary and its interior is closed to the public. Worshippers stand in front of the Worship Hall, and because the Main Hall lies behind that building and its own walls, the whole structure cannot be seen from the front. The architects' bulletin makes the same point.

From the grounds, expect to see little more than the copper roof rising beyond the Worship Hall and the walls. The shrine does not publish a photography policy for its buildings, so check at the shrine office before taking pictures. Directions and visiting hours for the grounds are on the Minase Shrine page.