Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall

The Two-Bay Link Between Worship Hall and Main Hall

Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall (御幸森天神宮幣殿, Miyukimori Tenjingū Heiden) is the short timber hall built in 1930 that joins the worship hall to the main hall at Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine in Momodani, Ikuno-ku, Osaka City, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on April 28, 2000. It sits between the worship hall to the south and the sanctuary to the north.

A heiden is the room where heihaku, the formal offerings of cloth and paper, are presented to the deity, and many shrines place one between the hall where people pray and the hall where the god resides. The Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall is two bays long with a footprint of 16 square meters, under a copper-sheathed (Dōban-buki) roof in the ryo-nagare form, whose slopes run down long on both sides of the ridge. It carries little outward ornament. Its job is to make the worship hall and the main hall a single building.

Why the Offering Hall Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall as number 27-0094 under the criterion of serving as a model of design, and what it singles out is the framing inside. There is no ceiling. The underside of the roof is left exposed as a Keshō-yaneura, finished over komai, a lattice of thin wooden strips, and beneath it two tiers of arched Kōryō beams, one above the other, span the room.

Two tiers of tie beams in a building only two bays long is more than the structure strictly needs; it is a design decision. On the side walls, windows of diagonal lattice, hishi-goshi, sit above Koshiita wainscot.

The timber is good-quality Hinoki cypress, the same as in the main hall and worship hall, left unpainted. The agency names this clean, plain-wood finish as one of the building's qualities.

What to Look for on the Offering Hall

The Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall stands inside the lattice fence, so what you see from the grounds is mostly its flank: the low stretch of roof between the big roof of the worship hall and the roof of the main hall. The diamond-lattice windows along its side are the thing to find. Their slats are set at 45 degrees, and comparing them with the upright slats of the Renji-mado windows in the fence itself makes the difference easy to see.

Step to one side of the grounds and follow the roofline from the worship hall back to the main hall. The offering hall's double-sloped roof is the seam that lets the three halls read as one continuous sanctuary.

The two tiers of beams and the lath-finished roof, the features the agency values most, are indoors and out of sight on an ordinary visit.

Visiting the Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall

The Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine Offering Hall is used for rites and is not open inside. It lies within the enclosure of the lattice fence, so its exterior is seen from the grounds, over the fence. The shrine publishes no rule on photography; be considerate of people at prayer.

Directions and visiting conditions for the grounds are on the Miyukimori Tenjingu Shrine page.