Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse

A Monks' Bathhouse That Copies Timber Forms in Concrete

Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse (西教寺浴室, Saikyō-ji Yokushitsu) is a reinforced-concrete bathhouse built in 1931 at Saikyō-ji, the head temple of the Tendai Shinsei school in Sakamoto-honmachi, Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on August 28, 2001.

It stands northeast of the Shoin and served for decades as the bathhouse of the temple's monks. Of the eighteen registered buildings at Saikyō-ji, it is the only one in reinforced concrete; all the others are timber or clay-walled storehouses.

It is single-storey, with a gabled roof (Kirizuma-zukuri) whose ridge runs north to south and an entrance in the gable end (Tsumairi), and a building area of 41 square metres. The plan splits along the line of the ridge: the front half is the changing room, the back half the bath.

Why the Bathhouse Was Registered

The Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse was registered as a building that serves as a model of its type. What the Agency for Cultural Affairs values is the way it switched materials without switching language: it is a concrete building dressed in the vocabulary of timber architecture.

Posts, horizontal tie rails (Nageshi), the boat-shaped brackets (Funahijiki) that take the beams, the bargeboards of the gable and the carved pendant (Gegyo) hanging at its peak are all reproduced faithfully in concrete. A room that faces steam and water every day got a durable structure, while its outward form let it stand quietly among the wooden temple buildings.

The record of the roof covering is inconsistent. In the national database the structure field reads sheet-iron roofing, while the descriptive text says copper sheet. The primary sources do not settle which is current, and this article reports both.

What to Look For at the Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse

The gable end is the place to stand. Bargeboards run along the edges of the triangle and a pendant hangs at the apex, a composition anyone who has visited Japanese temples will know, except that here all of it is cast. Up close, the smooth, grainless surface carries only the outlines of the timber parts it imitates.

Along the sides, posts and rails draw a grid across the walls, and brackets at the post tops take the beams. As an early Shōwa experiment in expressing traditional forms in a new material, the Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse is a small but telling example.

Visiting the Bathhouse

The Saikyoji Temple Bathhouse belongs to the working back of the temple and its interior is not open. It is not among the stops on the temple heritage guide's map, and its position northeast of the Shoin is outside the usual visitor route.

If you want to see the cast pendant and bargeboards, it is best to ask the temple before you go.