Satake Glass Shrine

A Guardian Shrine on the Corner of the Works

The Satake Glass Shrine (佐竹ガラス鎮守社, Satake Garasu Chinjusha) is a small copper-roofed shrine building of the early Showa period in Saiwai 2-chome, Izumi City, Osaka Prefecture, entered on the national register as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 24, 2001.

It occupies a corner of the premises of Satake Glass, a maker of colored craft-glass rods founded in 1927. The shrine follows the one-bay Nagare-zukuri form, with a single bay across the front, and sits on a plinth of dressed stone. Its building area is 2 square metres, by far the smallest of the six registered buildings.

A chinjusha is a tutelary shrine, set up to protect a particular piece of land or household. At Satake Glass, where family and factory share one property, the compound includes not only a house, an office and workshops but also a place of worship. The official description does not name the deity enshrined here.

Why It Was Registered

The Satake Glass Shrine was listed as a building that contributes to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs acknowledges that it is small and simply built but calls it an indispensable element of the property, holding its corner.

That is the same logic applied to most of the site. What counts is less the individual building than its place in the whole. The value of the Satake Glass buildings lies in having a place to live, a place to work and a place to worship on one lot, and the shrine supplies the third.

What to Look For: Economy of Detail

Tiny as it is, the Satake Glass Shrine carries the essential vocabulary of a shrine building. Both the main body and the projecting front porch, or Kōhai, stand on square posts. There are no bracket sets; the beams rest directly on the posts.

The eaves use a single layer of widely spaced Taruki rafters. Across the porch runs a bow-shaped Kōryō tie beam, and at its center sits a Kaerumata, the frog-leg strut that serves as a decorative filler between beam and eave. In an otherwise plain building, the curved beam and that one strut are nearly all the ornament there is.

The copper roof sweeps forward over the porch in the long front slope that defines the nagare style. The stone plinth lifts the whole thing off the ground and gives a 2-square-metre structure the bearing of a proper shrine.

Visiting the Satake Glass Shrine

The Satake Glass Shrine stands inside the Satake Glass property, and there is no announcement that it is open for worship or viewing. The official description places it on a corner of the site, but how much of it can be seen from outside has not been confirmed.

Satake Glass is a working factory, and tours and classes are by reservation. Please don't enter the premises unannounced. If you would like to see or photograph the shrine, ask when you book.