Omi Shrine Treasure House

Eight Square Metres Behind the Sanctuary

Omi Jingu Jinko (近江神宮神庫, also written Ōmi Jingū Jinko), the treasury storehouse 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 stands behind and to the left of the main sanctuary, in the southwest corner of the innermost enclosure. Its ridge runs north to south under a gabled roof of cypress bark, and it is entered from the long side, the arrangement Japanese carpenters call hirairi. The floor is raised well clear of the ground.

Eight square metres. It is the smallest of the shrine's registered buildings by a wide margin, and the only one of that size to be roofed in the same cypress bark as the sanctuary itself.

Small Building, Full Vocabulary

Nothing here is simplified because the building is little.

The posts are square with chamfered edges, a finish that softens the arris and takes time to produce. On top of them sit funahijiki, boat-shaped brackets. The walls are made by dropping horizontal boards into grooves cut in the posts, a technique that needs no nails and allows the timber to move with the seasons. At the gable ends the decorative framing is inoko-zasu, a strutted form, and a pendant hangs beneath each bargeboard.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs record makes the point plainly: this storehouse is an important element in composing the space behind the main sanctuary. A shed would have done the job of storage. What was wanted was something that would hold its own in the sight lines around the holiest part of the shrine, and eight square metres was enough to do it with.

Registration came on 9 October 1998 under number 25-0061, with the criterion that the building serves as a model of design. It belongs to the first construction campaign of 1940, the year Omi Jingu was founded to enshrine Emperor Tenji, who moved the capital to Otsu in 667. The complex was planned within the Home Ministry's Shrine Bureau by Sunami Takashi and Tani Shigeo.

Seeing It, and What to See Instead

Be realistic about access. Worship at Omi Jingu takes place at the outer worship hall, and the enclosures beyond it, where the storehouse stands, are not areas that general visitors enter. From the outer hall you may catch the cypress bark roofs of the inner group above the fence line, but the storehouse itself is unlikely to be visible.

That is worth knowing before you go, rather than after.

For a close look at the same carpentry vocabulary in a building you can actually stand beside, walk down to the outer court. The amulet office beside the tower gate uses the same boat-shaped brackets and the same strutted gable framing, at a scale you can examine from a metre away. The cypress bark roofing that this storehouse shares with the sanctuary is best appreciated from the outer worship hall, looking up the slope.

The grounds are open from 6:00 to 18:00 with no admission 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.