Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden

A 1928 Reception Hall Facing South at the Eastern Edge

Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden (大阪天満宮梅花殿, Baikaden, "Hall of Plum Blossoms") is a single-storey timber reception hall of 1928 facing south near the eastern edge of the grounds of Osaka Tenmangu Shrine in Tenjinbashi, Kita-ku, Osaka City, and it was listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on October 14, 1999. Today it is where the shrine holds its Shinto weddings.

According to the shrine, the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden was built to commemorate the grand festival marking the 1025th anniversary of Sugawara no Michizane. The sources disagree slightly on the date. The national database and the shrine's wedding facility give 1928, while the shrine's own page on its buildings says it was built in 1927.

The building has an Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof sheathed in copper and a footprint of 129 square meters, and a corridor links it to the Assembly Hall on the west. The shrine describes it as a hall for honored guests modeled on Heian-period palace architecture, and says it was built with old timbers received from the Ise Grand Shrine.

A Double-Coved Ceiling in the East Room

The Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden is registration number 27-0076, listed under the criterion of serving as a model of design. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs emphasizes is the formality of its interior.

The plan has a central core, the moya, wrapped by an outer aisle of Hisashi, and the room at the east end carries the most elaborate ceiling. Its edges rise in two successive coves, each curved rise fitted with Shirin braces, and the flat center is a fine-meshed lattice. The agency's term for it is shirin-tsuki niju oriage kogumi gōtenjō, a double-coved, fine-lattice coffered ceiling.

A coved Gō-tenjō coffered ceiling, and even more a double-coved one, is the form reserved for the highest-ranking rooms of shoin mansions and palaces. From outside, the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden is a plain single-storey hall, but it finishes its east room with the grandest of ceilings, so the order of rank among its rooms can be read overhead.

Sliding-Door Paintings by Osaka Artists

The shrine says the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden has an upper, a middle and a lower room, and that painters of the Osaka art world decorated their sliding doors for the grand festival of 1927. Among the names it lists are Tsubata Michihiko, who painted Matsushima, Mount Fuji and Mount Tatsuta, Suga Tatehiko, who painted a garden for the winding-stream poetry party, and Fukada Chokujō, who painted red and white plum blossoms.

The original paintings are now kept in the shrine's treasury, and the shrine says copies hang in the Kotobuki room of the Tenmangu Kaikan. The original doors are no longer in the building itself.

Visiting the Baikaden and Weddings

The Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden is used for Shinto weddings, and ordinary visitors cannot go inside. According to the Tenmangu Kaikan, which handles the bookings, ceremonies take from 2 to 60 guests, and friends and colleagues may attend as well as family.

The interior can be seen if you attend a wedding here or tour the venue at one of the Tenmangu Kaikan's bridal fairs. Both require booking, and fair dates are posted by the Kaikan.

The Osaka Tenmangu Shrine Baikaden stands near the eastern edge of the grounds, beyond the Assembly Hall. During a ceremony the area is the route of the wedding party, so keep any photography or watching discreet. Directions and gate hours are on the Osaka Tenmangu Shrine page.