Omi Shrine Lodgings

The Watch House on the South Side of the Gate

Omi Jingu Shukueisha (近江神宮宿衛舎, also written Ōmi Jingū Shukueisha), the watch house at Omi Jingu in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, was built in 1944 and joined the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998.

Four registered structures together enclose the outer court of this shrine: the tower gate, the amulet office, the outer colonnade, and this building. The watch house attaches to the wing wall on the south side of the gate, its ridge running east to west under a plain gabled roof, and covers 39 square metres.

It houses the staff who keep watch over the precinct, the shrine equivalent of a porter's lodge.

Built as a Twin, Finished With a Difference

The amulet office stands on the north side of the same gate, and the two buildings are all but identical. Structure, scale, and form match. Both were made by closing off one bay of the outer colonnade to create an entrance, which is a neat piece of planning: rather than adding rooms to the enclosure, the designers took a section of the covered walkway and stopped up its ends.

The difference is at the gable ends. Small subsidiary eaves, kobisashi, are added on both gable sides of the watch house, tidying the elevation where the building meets the wing wall and the colonnade. The amulet office does without them.

It is a minor adjustment and easy to walk past. It also shows the designers treating a pair of near-identical buildings as a compositional problem rather than simply repeating a drawing.

Registration came on 9 October 1998 under number 25-0070, with the criterion that the building serves as a model of design. It belongs to the second construction campaign of 1944. Omi Jingu was founded in 1940 to enshrine Emperor Tenji, who moved the capital to Otsu in 667, and the complex was planned within the Home Ministry's Shrine Bureau by Sunami Takashi and Tani Shigeo.

What to Look For

Stand in front of the vermilion tower gate and look left and right at the same time. The symmetry of the outer court is the point of the composition, and the watch house and amulet office are its two arms. Then look for the small eaves at the gable ends on the south side, and you have the one detail that separates them.

The buildings of this second campaign were finished in vermilion lacquer with white plaster, and they sit in deliberate contrast to the plain unpainted timber of the 1940 sanctuary group higher up the slope. Walking uphill from the gate, you cross that boundary.

The watch house is a working facility and is not open to visitors, but it stands directly on the main approach and its exterior is unavoidable in the best sense. Photographing it from outside is unrestricted, and the grounds are open 6:00 to 18:00 without charge.

Omi-jingu-mae station on the Keihan Ishiyama-Sakamoto line is a nine-minute walk. From Kyoto, take the JR Kosei line to Otsukyo in about eleven minutes and transfer on foot to Keihan Otsukyo, 150 metres away. Drivers have 200 free spaces outside the New Year period.