Saikyoji Temple Seikyo Storehouse

A Storehouse Built to Receive Scriptures from Mount Hiei

Saikyoji Temple Seikyo Storehouse (西教寺正教蔵, Saikyō-ji Seikyō-gura) is a two-storey clay-walled storehouse built in 1879 at Saikyō-ji, the head temple of the Tendai Shinsei school in Sakamoto-honmachi, Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, and was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on August 28, 2001. It stands east of the Main Hall on a level pad cut into the hillside.

The reason it exists is on record. In May 1879 Inaoka Gyōnyo, head priest of the Seikyō-bō lodge in the Kitadani valley of Mount Hiei's Saitō precinct, gave Saikyō-ji more than 200 boxes of shōgyō, the sacred texts and doctrinal writings of the school. The storehouse was built to hold them, and it carries the same name, Seikyō, as the lodge that sent them.

It is a Dozo-zukuri building: a timber frame sealed inside thick earthen walls, here two storeys high under a gabled roof of interlocking pantiles, with a building area of 24 square metres. Of the eighteen registered buildings at the temple, only the Mausoleum of 1842 is older.

Why the Seikyo Storehouse Was Registered

The Saikyoji Temple Seikyo Storehouse was registered under the criterion of buildings that serve as a model of their type. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles out one part in particular: the Kuramae, the roofed porch in front of the door.

On the west front, a gabled canopy with a gently swelling roof line shelters the entrance. Everything from the posts to the underside of the eaves is buried in Shikkui plaster, so no timber is left exposed to sparks. Against that sealed white surface the carpenter allowed himself two flourishes: a tie beam (Kōryō) carved with scrolling foliage, and an oversized, deliberately exaggerated board-style Kaerumata strut. Those two pieces are where the early Meiji date shows.

The walls are white plaster above and vertical boarding below, the footing is dressed stone, and the pad is retained by walls of natural stone. The storehouse follows the conventions of the Edo-period clay storehouse closely; only the carving under the canopy tells you the country had already entered a new era.

What to Look For

Stand under the canopy and look up. The carved beam and the splayed strut stand out sharply against the plastered soffit. The temple's cultural heritage guide describes the strut as a jinjizuka, a form whose legs spread like the Chinese character for "person", and at Seikyō-gura the spread is wide and confident.

Then look down. The Saikyoji Temple Seikyo Storehouse sits a little proud of the ground on its stone-walled terrace, lifted clear of damp and set apart from neighbouring roofs. For a building whose job was to keep paper safe from fire and mould, the siting is part of the design.

Southeast of the Main Hall stands the Ossuary of around 1917. Seen one after the other, the two show how much taste changed around the same hall in some forty years.

Seeing the Seikyo Storehouse

The Saikyoji Temple Seikyo Storehouse is a working store and its interior is not open. The exterior can be seen from the grounds by walking round to the east side of the Main Hall, and the temple's own heritage guide lists it among the stops in the precinct.

The porch faces west, so approaching from the Main Hall side brings the canopy into view head-on. Afternoon light reaches the porch most easily, picking out the carving against the white plaster.