Sannomiya Shrine Main Hall and Worship Hall (Auxiliary Shrine of Hiyoshi Taisha)

The Second Hall on the Summit

The Sannomiya Shrine Main Hall and Worship Hall, an auxiliary shrine of Hiyoshi Taisha near the top of Hachiōjiyama in Sakamoto-honmachi, Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture, are dated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs to 1599 and were designated an Important Cultural Property in 1907, the Worship Hall being added to the designation in 1983. Ōtsu city gives 1595 as the construction year instead, so the primary sources disagree; this article follows the Agency's record.

Sannomiya Shrine, one of the seven principal Sannō shrines, enshrines the rough spirit of Kamotamayorihime no Kami, whose gentler aspect is worshipped at Jugegū on the valley floor. Ushio Shrine, a few paces away, holds the rough spirit of her husband. The pairing that exists between the lower shrines is repeated here on the mountain.

The two summit shrines stand on either side of a large rock called Kogane no Ōiwa. The Sannomiya Shrine Main Hall and Worship Hall occupy the left-hand side of it as you arrive.

Small Divergences from Ushio Shrine

From a distance the two look alike. Each has a three-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuary roofed in cypress bark and a worship hall built out from the slope on long posts, and in both cases the rear of the worship hall joins the sanctuary so that the pair reads as one structure.

The dimensions differ. The Agency's records give the Ushio worship hall as five bays by five, while the Sannomiya Shrine Worship Hall is four by five. The depth is the same and only the frontage is a bay narrower, which suggests the width of usable ground on each shelf of the slope decided the matter.

The entrance differs too. The Agency notes an attached side entrance for the Sannomiya Shrine Worship Hall, with no such note for its neighbour. On a cramped summit, the question of where to admit visitors was answered differently at the two shrines, and the sideways approach is something you feel rather than read about once you are standing there.

The roofs part company as well. Ushio Shrine has a cusped gable added over the side eaves; the Sannomiya worship hall is recorded as built in the cusped-gable manner, the curve worked into the roof rather than applied to it. If you compare the two buildings, three things repay attention: the frontage width, the position of the entrance, and how the gable is handled.

What Standing on the Summit Means

These buildings sit near the top of Hachiōjiyama, roughly 380 metres above sea level. The peak, also called Ushioyama, is where the religious history of Hiyoshi Taisha begins. The rock preceded the buildings, and the mountain preceded the rock.

Cantilevering a floor out from a slope answers a problem that never arises on level ground. If there is not enough flat rock to lay foundations on, the only remedy is to lengthen the posts and carry the deck outward. The carpenters of 1599 did this at a scale of four bays by five. Walk around beneath the platform and look at how posts and tie-beams interlock, and the labour involved in building anything at all up here becomes clear.

Lake Biwa appears behind you as a by-product of the altitude. If the buildings brought you here, though, the more useful thing to establish is the geometry: the rock in the middle, Ushio Shrine on the right, Sannomiya Shrine on the left. That arrangement states the structure of this shrine more concisely than any explanation.

During the Sannō Festival, portable shrines are carried up to these two sanctuaries in early March and brought down again on the night of 12 April.

Visiting

No separate fee applies to these buildings. Pay the entrance contribution to Hiyoshi Taisha, 500 yen for adults, 300 yen for junior and senior high school students, free for younger children and 450 yen each for groups of thirty or more, then walk up from the trailhead. The interiors are closed; viewing and photography from outside are unrestricted.

The trailhead lies between the western and eastern compounds, flanked by the distant-worship halls for Sannomiya and Ushiogū. The climb is about one kilometre and takes roughly thirty minutes each way, with stone steps only at the beginning and the end and a steep hill path in between. The shrine advises hiking boots or trainers, and no vehicle can make the journey.

Precinct hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with gates opening at 6:00 a.m. from April to September and 7:00 a.m. from October to March. The round trip takes about an hour, and the trail loses light quickly once the sun drops behind the ridge, so a late-afternoon start is a poor idea. Buy water before you set out.

The foot of the mountain is about ten minutes on foot from Sakamoto-Hieizanguchi Station on the Keihan Ishiyama Sakamoto Line, or twenty from Hieizan-Sakamoto Station on the JR Kosei Line. Free parking for around fifty cars is available, charged during November.