Osasahara Shrine Main Hall

One Building, National Treasure since 1961

Osasahara Shrine Main Hall (大笹原神社本殿, Osasahara Jinja Honden) is a middle Muromachi structure at Osasahara, Yasu City, Shiga Prefecture, made an Important Cultural Property on 2 August 1901 and designated a National Treasure on 27 April 1961. The quantity is one building and the owner the shrine.

Sixty years separate the two listings, after the seventy-five of Aoi Aso Shrine and the hundred and nine of the Five Wisdom Buddhas.

The hall is three bays by three bays, single-storeyed, with a hip-and-gable roof, a one-bay porch and cypress bark. The date field gives 1414, matching the era year in the commentary.

Shrine Name and Place Name Use Different Characters for One Sound

Set the name beside the address and the characters do not agree.

The shrine's name is written with one character for the bamboo grass in it. The address is written with another.

Both are read the same way, and both mean a kind of small bamboo, but they are different characters.

With the ceremonial sword on a pear-skin ground, the title used older variant forms: the same word written another way.

This is not that. The two characters here are distinct characters with distinct senses, sharing a reading and split between the name of a shrine and the name of a place.

The record gives no reason. This article follows the Agency and keeps each as it stands.

Smallness Is Conceded, Then a Superlative Follows

The assessment is worded in a particular order.

It is a small shrine hall, the commentary says, but the handling of its details is especially fine, and the openwork panels and doors are beautiful in design.

Smallness comes first, and then the turn. Value is placed somewhere other than size.

The Fudoin main hall was called the largest of medieval Zen Buddha halls. The Nagamitsu naginata was explained by the fact that such weapons were expended and so rarely survive.

Here the record concedes the size and praises the detail.

The close is unusual: among medieval shrine buildings it is the finest one of them. A superlative and a limiting word sit in a single phrase.

Superlatives and Their Limits

It is worth setting the forms side by side.

The armed warrior haniwa was called the finest work, with the field named: among warrior figures found in eastern Japan.

The Myooin main hall was called one of the fine main halls of the Kamakura period: one among several.

The Jodoji main hall was called among the oldest of those whose date is securely attested: a condition attached.

Osasahara Shrine Main Hall is called the finest one among medieval shrine buildings. The superlative and the limit stand together.

The field is named, but this pairing has not appeared before. This article quotes the record as it is.

Visiting

The hall stands at Osasahara, Yasu City, Shiga Prefecture, owned by the shrine. It stands in the precinct and its exterior can be seen on a visit.

It measures three bays by three. The Shinra Zenshindo at Onjoji is the same, but that one is in the flowing-roof style and this one hip-and-gable: the roofs differ.

Roofing differs elsewhere too. The Shinra Zenshindo and this hall are both in cypress bark, while the Myooin and Jodoji main halls are in plain tile.

The openwork panels and doors named in the assessment are details of the building. What is valued is not the scale but the design of such parts.

Related entries include the main hall and worship hall of another shrine in the same city. Access to the interior follows the shrine's own arrangements. Check before travelling.