Raigoji Temple Main Hall

One Hall, an Important Cultural Property since 1949

Raigoji Temple Main Hall (来迎寺本堂, Raigoji Hondo) stands at Wada, Kumatori Town, Sennan District, Osaka Prefecture, listed as an Important Cultural Property on 30 May 1949. The listing is as an Important Cultural Property, not a National Treasure, and the owner is the temple.

The quantity is one building. The structure is three bays by three, single-storeyed, hipped, roofed in formal tiles.

The date field reads late Kamakura, 1275 to 1332: a span of fifty-seven years. At the Kuwanomidera main hall the range ran 1333 to 1392, fifty-nine years. Giving a range continues.

A Serious Correction: The Old Article Described a Temple of the Same Name

The article previously published here was written about another property.

It took as its subject a Raigoji in Matsubara City, Osaka Prefecture. The name Matsubara appeared eighteen times in the text; Kumatori did not appear at all.

This property stands at Wada, Kumatori Town, Sennan District. Matsubara lay in the old province of Kawachi and Kumatori in Izumi: different regions within the same prefecture.

The periods differ as well. The main hall of the Matsubara temple is of the Edo period, dated 1732 in the record. This one is late Kamakura.

With the rhinoceros-horn knife, a Shosoin treasure was described instead; with the black-laced domaru, a property of the same name at Kasuga Taisha; with the cherry-laced armour, the text of the knife article copied in; with the Nihon Shoki volumes, a National Treasure at the Kyoto National Museum.

This is the fifth such case. Two temples of the same name in different cities appear to be the cause. The present article has been rewritten in full from the record.

Three Bays Across and Three Bays Deep

The front and the depth measure the same.

The structural field gives three bays across and three bays deep.

The plan comes close to a square.

At the Kuwanomidera main hall it was five bays by six, the depth exceeding the width. The worship hall at Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine is seven by three and that at Otonashi Shrine three by two, both wider than deep.

Here the two are equal. With the lacquered dais, Shizuoka Prefecture gave length and width together as a single figure of 64.9 centimetres: two directions assigned one value.

Here the unit is the bay, and both directions read three. The roof is hipped and tiled, and the building is single-storeyed.

Other Listed Properties Stand in the Same Town

Related entries include properties from Kumatori itself.

Cultural Heritage Online lists among them the Furui family study and the Naka family residence, the latter with the town named in brackets after it.

Both stand in Kumatori. The residence carries its location within the name.

With the clay figurine from Ebisuda, a find-spot followed a slash. The former Imose residence in Wakayama carries its location in brackets in the same way.

Adding a location to a name is how properties of the same or similar name are distinguished.

This property's name carries no location, which leaves it easily confused with the Matsubara hall. The mistake in the old article appears to turn on this.

Visiting

The hall stands at Wada, Kumatori Town, Sennan District, Osaka Prefecture, owned by the temple.

The commentary field on Cultural Heritage Online carries nothing. As with the Kuwanomidera main hall, the structural and date fields alone convey what the building is.

The listing is dated 30 May 1949, before the cultural properties law of 1950.

The Nihon Shoki volumes were listed in 1944 and the lacquered dais in 1924. This one falls just after the war and just before the change in the law.

It is a working temple hall, and access follows the temple's own arrangements. Check before travelling.