Kasuga Shrine Main Hall

A Kamakura Sanctuary on the Shigaraki Road

Kasuga Shrine Main Hall (春日神社本殿, Kasuga Jinja Honden) is the sanctuary of Kasuga Shrine in Ōishi Tomikawa-chō, Ōtsu City, Shiga Prefecture, built in 1319 in the late Kamakura period and designated an Important Cultural Property on 17 April 1902.

The shrine sits in the hills at the southern edge of Ōtsu, beside National Route 422 where it climbs toward Shigaraki, with the Shigaraki River running west close by. By tradition it was founded in 1154, when Fujiwara no Shigetomo brought a share of the deity of the great Kasuga shrine in Nara to this valley.

Given the name, you might expect a hall in the Kasuga-zukuri style of the parent shrine. Kasuga Shrine Main Hall is nothing of the kind. It is a two-bay building under an hip-and-gable roof, a combination that almost never appears in Shinto sanctuaries.

An Even Number of Bays

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the building as two bays across and two deep, single storey, hip-and-gable, with a two-bay Kōhai porch and a roof of cypress bark.

That even number matters. Shrine sanctuaries are normally built with one or three bays across the front, leaving an opening at the centre. A two-bay front needs three posts, which puts a post squarely in the middle. A guide to local heritage published by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's Daidogawa Dam office calls this pairing of a two-bay plan and a hip-and-gable roof rare anywhere in Japan, and says the hall preserves the character of late Kamakura shrine building well.

The Ōtsu City Museum of History goes further. Among nationally designated buildings, it says, only one other shrine hall of this form survives, a Muromachi-period example in Gunma Prefecture. On the dates alone, the Ōtsu hall is the elder of the two.

The ministry's guide also notes how little the building has been altered since it went up, and praises the quality of its carving. National designation came in 1902, in the early years of state protection for shrine and temple buildings.

Reading Kasuga Shrine Main Hall

Stand before the hall and count the posts across the front. Three posts, two openings, a post dead centre: once you see it, the facade looks subtly unlike any other shrine you have visited, and that small jolt is the point of coming here.

Then take in the roof. The hip-and-gable form carries a two-bay porch pushed out to the front, the cypress-bark eaves stepping forward over it. From the side, the triangle of the gable and the hipped slope below it read clearly.

The finest details are the Kaerumata, the frog-leg struts set at the centre of each bay. The ministry's guide singles out the beauty of their outlines, and the Ōtsu museum describes carved arabesque scrolls combined with swallowtail butterflies.

Visiting Kasuga Shrine Main Hall

The interior of Kasuga Shrine Main Hall is not open to visitors, so the visit is about the exterior. The hall stands at the back of the precinct, and you may not be able to get close enough to study the carving; binoculars or a camera with a longer lens help. We found no staffed office, reception or admission fee, and no posted restriction on photography. Keep clear of any rites or worshippers.

The Ōtsu City Museum of History gives the public-transport route as a Keihan bus bound for Ōishi from JR Ishiyama Station to the Shikatobi-bashi stop, followed by a walk east of about 50 minutes. With that much walking, a car is the realistic choice; the shrine fronts National Route 422.