Saimyoji Five-Storied Pagoda

The Pagoda They Call Tokiyori's Tower

The Saimyōji Five-Storied Stone Pagoda (最明寺五重塔, Saimyōji Gojūnotō, also written Saimyō-ji Gojū-no-tō) stands in the precinct of Saimyōji in Katsube-chō, Moriyama City, Shiga Prefecture. Assigned to the late Kamakura period, it was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on 20 March 1954.

Saimyōji is a small Jishū-sect temple, formally Kamakurazan Hōjōin Saimyōji, seven minutes on foot from the west exit of JR Moriyama Station. Walk in through the gate and the pagoda is to your right, near the entrance to the cemetery, level with the main hall. Local people call it the Tokiyori-tō, Tokiyori's Tower.

The name comes from Hōjō Tokiyori (1227–1263), fifth regent of the Kamakura shogunate. Temple tradition holds that Tokiyori broke his journey to the capital at this spot, founded the temple, and donated the pagoda along with it. The temple's own name follows from his: after taking the tonsure and retiring from office, Tokiyori was known as Saimyōji-dono, the Lord of Saimyōji. Records at Moriyama City give the year of that founding as Kenchō 2 (1250).

A Legend and a Date That Do Not Quite Meet

The Agency for Cultural Affairs assigns the pagoda to the late Kamakura period, 1275 to 1332.

Tokiyori died in 1263.

The gap is not a small one, and it is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Stone pagodas are dated chiefly on formal grounds: the proportion of the first-storey shaft, the treatment of the eaves, the profile of the base. On those grounds the national register places this tower a generation or more after the regent's death. Local documentation, following the temple's own tradition, describes the carving as mid-Kamakura and repeats the Kenchō 2 attribution. Where the two accounts diverge, the Agency's assessment is the one that carries formal weight, and the Tokiyori story is best understood as the temple's foundation narrative rather than as a construction date.

That does not make the tradition worthless. Attributions of this kind preserve something real about how a community understood its own origins, and the Hōjō connection is embedded in the temple's mountain name, Kamakurazan, and in its hall name, Hōjōin. The stone and the story are simply telling different kinds of truth.

One further complication: the pagoda has not always stood where it stands now. Moriyama's cultural-property records note that it was moved repeatedly within the precinct, first at the eastern edge of the grounds, then beside the bell tower, then south of the main hall, before arriving at its present position. Whatever archaeological context it once had was lost long ago.

Looking at the Tower

This is a small monument. Shiga's prefectural tourism authority records a height of about 2.4 metres for the tower proper and an overall height of 3.46 metres including its base, which puts it well under the scale of the roadside pagoda at Anyōji-chō in Ōmihachiman, designated on the same day with the adjacent number.

Smallness here is not slightness. The first-storey shaft is tall relative to its width and carries seated Buddhas carved on its four faces, the shihōbutsu arrangement, one for each direction. Above them the five roofs lift their eaves only gently, take a shallow pitch, and keep a generous thickness of stone. The proportions settle the tower downward. Standing in front of it you register solidity before you register height.

The summit is incomplete. The national register describes the pagoda as lacking the upper part of its sōrin, the finial mast, and Moriyama's own documentation calls the loss of the upper half a matter for regret. What remains stops abruptly, and the eye has to finish the shape on its own.

Two practical points before you go. The pagoda now leans slightly, and Moriyama City asks visitors not to approach too closely, for their own safety. Respect that: photograph from a few paces back. And Saimyōji is a working temple with a small resident community rather than a visitor attraction. The city lists visiting hours of 9:00 to 16:30, with an advance reservation required for those wishing to worship or to hear a Dharma talk, made at least ten days ahead and by 10:00 in the morning. Admission is by voluntary offering. Allow five to ten minutes for the pagoda itself, or around twenty if a guided explanation has been arranged. Parking is limited to three to five vehicles, at a lot across from the dairy shop on the approach.

While you are in the precinct, look for the Jizō hall. Its image draws petitioners praying for safe childbirth, and the temple also holds an Edo-period bell of 1691 and a metal gong of 1734. A gorintō reliquary tower of 1604 is kept out of public view.