Omi Shrine Talisman Granting Office

The Counter Where Visitors Actually Stop

Omi Jingu Shinpu Juyosho (近江神宮神符授与所, also written Ōmi Jingū Shinpu Juyojo), the amulet office at Omi Jingu in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, was built in 1944 and joined the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties in 1998.

Most of the registered buildings at this shrine are admired from a distance. This one has a counter, and nearly every visitor uses it. Amulets and votive tablets are issued here, and this is where you present a book for the calligraphic seal that pilgrims collect.

The building stands at the eastern edge of the terrace below the inner court, attached to the wing wall on the north side of the tower gate. Its ridge runs east to west under a gabled roof, and it covers 39 square metres. Together with the gate, the watch house opposite, and the outer colonnade, it encloses the outer court.

Square Posts and Round Posts, Used Deliberately

The detail to look for while you are queueing is the treatment of the posts. Square and round posts are both used, and they are not mixed at random. Round posts belong to the more formal parts of Japanese architectural vocabulary, square posts to the plainer; distributing them across a single small building lets the carpenters grade one part against another without changing scale or material.

Above the posts sit funahijiki, boat-shaped brackets. The gable ends use the strutted inoko-zasu framing, and a pendant hangs beneath each bargeboard. These are the same details found on the treasury storehouse in the innermost enclosure, a building almost no visitor will ever see, and here they are at eye level.

The amulet office was made by closing off one bay of the outer colonnade to form an entrance, the same manoeuvre used for the watch house on the south side of the gate. The two buildings match in structure, scale, and form. The watch house adds small eaves at its gable ends; this one does without them.

Registration came on 9 October 1998 under number 25-0069, with the criterion that it serves as a model of design. It belongs to the second campaign of 1944, which was finished in vermilion lacquer and white plaster in deliberate contrast to the unpainted timber of the 1940 sanctuary group. 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.

Visiting

Amulets and seal stamps are issued from 9:00 to 16:30. The grounds themselves open earlier and close later, 6:00 to 18:00, with no admission charge, so arriving outside those hours means finding the counter shut.

Because you have a legitimate reason to stand still here, this is the best building in the precinct for close observation. Look up at the brackets while you wait. Compare the round post to your left with the square one further along.

Prayers and formal rites are arranged separately, from 9:30 to 16:00. The Clock Museum and Treasure House, which exists because Emperor Tenji is credited with Japan's first water clock in 671, is open 9:30 to 16:30 with last entry at 16:00, at 300 yen for adults and 150 yen for schoolchildren.

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, with a 150-metre walk to Keihan Otsukyo. There are 200 free parking spaces outside the New Year period.