Omi Shrine Outer Worship Hall

The Hall Where Visitors Actually Worship

Omi Jingu Sotohaiden (近江神宮外拝殿, also written Ōmi Jingū Sotohaiden), the outer worship hall at Omi Jingu in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, was built in 1940 and was entered on the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998.

It occupies the eastern edge of the inner court terrace, five bays across and three deep, under an irimoya hipped-and-gabled roof of copper. At 157 square metres it is the largest of the shrine's registered structures apart from the shrine office, and it is the one every visitor stands in front of. Prayers are offered here; the inner hall and the sanctuary beyond are not areas the public enters.

You arrive at it by climbing. That fact is built into the architecture.

A Staircase Driven Through the Middle of a Building

On the east face the hall pushes out a veranda with a railing, carried forward over the falling ground in the manner of kake-zukuri, the stage construction used at hillside temples. The hall does not sit on its terrace so much as lean out from it.

Then comes the move that gives the building its character. The stone stair climbing from the outer court is not brought to the edge of the hall and stopped there. It is driven into the central bay, cutting through the building itself. Architecture that admits a passage through its middle in this way is described as wari-haiden, a split worship hall, and the form is normally found in older shrines where a road or a processional route had to pass through.

Above the head of that front stair sits a kara-hafu, the undulating gable with a lifted centre. A second one is set at the centre of the rear face. The two mark the ends of the route through the building, so that a worshipper climbing the steps passes under a curved gable, crosses the hall, and looks out through another towards the sanctuary.

Registration came on 9 October 1998 under number 25-0068, with the criterion that the hall serves as a model of design. It belongs to the first construction campaign, completed in 1940, and is left as plain unpainted timber, in contrast to the vermilion and white of the tower gate and colonnades below. Omi Jingu was founded that year 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.

Visiting

Climb the stone stair slowly and look up as you pass beneath the curved gable. That is the single best moment the shrine offers, and it lasts about three seconds if you hurry.

From the front of the hall, look along it to either end. The inner hall and, above it, the sanctuary with its ridge ornaments come into view from the sides rather than from the centre. Beyond them lie the slatted fences and the treasury storehouse, which general visitors do not reach.

Note also the colour. Standing here you are in the unpainted timber of the first campaign; the vermilion structures are all below you. Turning to look back down the slope makes the division plain.

The grounds are open from 6:00 to 18:00 with no admission charge, and the hall can be approached and photographed freely. Formal prayers are conducted from 9:30 to 16:00, amulets and seal stamps issued from 9:00 to 16:30. Allow about ten minutes on foot from the car park. A ramp runs from beside the Clock Museum to the outer worship hall for wheelchair users, with an accessible toilet by the museum.

Omi-jingu-mae station on the Keihan Ishiyama-Sakamoto line is a nine-minute walk. From Kyoto, the JR Kosei line reaches Otsukyo in about eleven minutes, followed by a 150-metre walk to Keihan Otsukyo. There are 200 free parking spaces outside the New Year period.