Omi Shrine Outer Corridor (northern Part)

The Long Arm of the Outer Court

Omi Jingu Sotokairo, North Section (近江神宮外廻廊（北部）, also written Ōmi Jingū Sotokairō Hokubu), the north wing of the outer colonnade at Omi Jingu in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, was built in 1944 and joined the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998.

It attaches to the amulet office beside the tower gate, runs north, then turns west at its far end to meet the outer slatted fence. Sixty square metres, single storey, copper roof.

This is the arm that survives at full length, and walking beside it is the best way to understand what the outer court was meant to be.

An Open Corridor With a Railed Veranda

The colonnade is a tanro, a single corridor rather than a double one, and it is left open on its sides. There are no walls to speak of. A gabled roof runs the length of it, carried on round posts, and on the outer side a veranda is pushed out in the manner of a raised floor with a railing running around it.

That railed veranda is the detail that lifts the structure above mere circulation. It gives the colonnade a face, a place where the building addresses the courtyard rather than simply bounding it, and it explains why the south wing, which sets its railing on an earth floor instead, reads as the quieter of the two.

The carpentry vocabulary is consistent with the rest of the second campaign. Round posts carry funahijiki, boat-shaped brackets. The gable ends use the strutted inoko-zasu framing, finished with a plain pendant beneath the bargeboard. Plain is the operative word: the pendants here are simpler than those on the buildings of the sanctuary group, and the difference in elaboration tracks the difference in rank.

Registration came on 9 October 1998 under number 25-0071, with the criterion that it serves as a model of design. Omi Jingu was founded in 1940 to enshrine Emperor Tenji, and the complex was planned within the Home Ministry's Shrine Bureau by Sunami Takashi and Tani Shigeo.

What to Look For

Walk the full length rather than crossing the courtyard. The rhythm of round posts against the wooded slope behind is the experience the colonnade was built to produce, and it takes perhaps ninety seconds to have it.

At the north end, watch for the right-angle turn to the west where the colonnade hands over to the outer slatted fence. Enclosure passes from a walkable structure to a fence without any break in the roof line, which is a neat piece of planning and easy to miss.

Look up at the pendants under the gable ends. Then, later in your visit, look at the equivalent detail wherever you can see the sanctuary group. The vocabulary is the same; the elaboration is not.

The colonnade is open-sided and stands on the main visitor route, so there is no restriction on approaching or photographing it. 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, and 200 free parking spaces are available outside the New Year period.