Saikyoji Temple Main Hall

A Zelkova Hall Built for Ceaseless Chanting

Saikyōji Hondō (西教寺本堂, also written Saikyo-ji Hondo), the main hall of Saikyō-ji in Sakamoto-Hommachi, Ōtsu City, Shiga Prefecture, was built in 1739 and was designated an Important Cultural Property on 24 May 1986.

The hall measures seven bays across the front and six bays deep, with a single storey under a hip-and-gable roof of heavy formal tiles, and a three-bay porch projecting at the centre of the facade. Attached to the rear is the uradō, a memorial-tablet hall one bay square, roofed as a gable at the back and joined directly to the main structure, with a pent-roof skirt of pantiles wrapping its rear and both flanks. The two together are counted as a single designated building.

Saikyō-ji is the head temple of Tendai Shinsei-shū, one of three head temples in the Tendai family of schools alongside Enryaku-ji and Onjō-ji. Oda Nobunaga's assault on Mount Hiei in 1571 burned through Sakamoto and the temple with it. A provisional main hall went up in 1574; the present building replaced it in 1739. The timber, according to temple tradition, was donated by the Kishū branch of the Tokugawa house, and the hall is built almost entirely of zelkova, a hard, close-grained wood that ages to a deep amber.

The Case for Designation

The Agency for Cultural Affairs record makes a specific argument. The hall is technically and qualitatively accomplished, its plan and structure show characteristics of a new era, and it counts as a fine example of the large-scale eighteenth-century Buddhist hall in Shiga Prefecture.

That phrase about "a new era" repays attention. By the eighteenth century, the interior of a large temple hall was no longer organised the way medieval halls had been. Congregational space had expanded, the worship area and the sanctuary were separated more decisively, and the attached rear hall for memorial tablets reflected a lay following that expected its dead to be housed within the building. Saikyō-ji's practice of fudan nenbutsu, unceasing recitation of the Buddha's name, which has run at the temple since Shinsei entered it in 1486, required exactly this kind of accommodating interior.

Shiga has an unusually dense stock of Buddhist architecture, much of it medieval and much of it small. A hall of this size from the mid-Edo period is comparatively scarce there, which is part of why the designation singles out its scale.

Monkeys on the Eaves, Gold Inside

Look up at the porch before you enter. A small monkey figure sits on the eaves, and more monkeys appear in the kaerumata, the frog-leg struts between the beams, along with birds, rabbits and horses. The monkey turns up repeatedly across the precinct, and the story behind it is told inside the hall itself. The upper part of the front is fitted with sankarado, panel doors with openwork carving; the ends carry shitomido, hinged lattice shutters that swing upward. Along the flanks, shitomido, sankarado and plank walls pierced with cusped katōmado windows alternate.

Inside, a shumidan altar platform occupies the centre of the sanctuary. On it sits the temple's principal image, a seated Amida Nyorai designated an Important Cultural Property, a jōroku-scale figure of the late Heian period in joined-block construction with lacquer and gold leaf and carved eyes. Its boat-shaped halo, populated with flying celestials, is a rare survival at this scale. Temple tradition says the image was brought here in 1574 from Jōfuku-ji in what is now Kōka City. The four pillars framing the altar are painted in full polychrome, and the carving in the transoms and struts is dense.

The rear hall once housed a standing Shō Kannon of the tenth century, also an Important Cultural Property and the oldest sculpture at the temple, though it is no longer kept there.

The hall is included in the standard visit. Saikyō-ji opens daily from 9:00 to 16:30 and charges 500 yen for adults; there is a car park on site, and buses from either Sakamoto-Hieizanguchi Station or Hieizan-Sakamoto Station stop at the temple gate. Interior photography is restricted in places, so check at the desk. The graves of Akechi Mitsuhide and his family lie a short walk from the hall, which is why the precinct fills up whenever he features on television.