Kiyomizu-Dera Temple Bell Tower

A Bell Tower of 1919

Kiyomizudera Shoro (清水寺鐘楼, also written Kiyomizu-dera Shōrō), the bell tower of Otowasan Kiyomizudera in Aoi Ward, Shizuoka City, is a small timber structure of 1919 that was entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 28 April 2000. It occupies 27 square metres, which makes it the smallest of the three registered buildings at this temple and, for many visitors, the most rewarding to look at closely.

The plan is hō-ikken, a single bay square, and all four sides are left open, so the bell hangs in full view with nothing but columns and bracketing around it. The roof is irimoya, the hip-and-gable form, laid in hongawara tiling with alternating broad pan tiles and rounded cover tiles.

Its designer was Koda Minoru (古宇田実), who at the time held a post at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, the institution that became the Tokyo University of the Arts. Twelve years later Koda returned to this hillside, by then principal of the Kobe Higher Technical School, to design the reinforced concrete main hall and the timber priests' quarters of 1931. The bell tower is the earliest of the three and the one where his interest in ornament runs freest.

The Detail That Earned Registration

Registration number 22-0068 was assigned in the twenty-fourth round, with public notice on 25 May 2000, under the criterion that the building serves as a model of design. The Agency for Cultural Affairs description is unusually specific about ornament, which tells you where the value lies.

Bracket complexes with odaruki, angled tail rafters, sit on both the main columns and the intermediate posts, producing an eaves zone far richer than a structure of this size would normally carry. Look into the gable and along the beams for the kaerumata, the frog-leg struts whose curved silhouettes fill the space between horizontal members, and at the kibana, the carved nosings where beam ends project past the columns. Both are singled out in the official description as distinctive.

The detail that surprises people is at the corners. The diagonal braces there are cast bronze, not wood, and they are worked with a lotus motif. Metal bracing in a wooden bell tower was not common in 1919, and casting it with Buddhist ornament rather than leaving it plain suggests an architect who wanted the reinforcement to be part of the design rather than an apology for it.

The Bell, and Ringing It Yourself

The bell hanging here today is not the one the tower was built for. The temple records that a bell came to it from the city of Shizuoka in 1911, described in one account as the bell that had sounded the hours for the town, and the tower followed eight years later. That bell was surrendered during the war, when metal across Japan was requisitioned for munitions. The present bell dates from 1950.

This is the one registered building at Kiyomizudera that visitors can put their hands on. On New Year's Eve the temple opens the bell to the public and the first hundred arrivals each strike it. Numbered tickets are handed out from 23:30, a service follows, and the ringing begins around 23:40. The count of one hundred and eight matches the number of earthly desires that the ringing is meant to clear away before the new year starts. The neighbouring park serves as temporary parking that night, which is worth knowing given that the temple itself has only two spaces.

At other times the tower stands open on the precinct and can be examined from every side without charge or appointment, which is exactly how a four-sided open structure asks to be seen. Photography is unrestricted in practice. Otowacho Station on the Shizuoka Railway line is a two-minute walk to the south; the Shizuoka interchange of the Tomei Expressway is about five kilometres off.

If you are timing a visit, 9 July brings the temple's largest observance, the Kannon festival with its evening procession and fireworks, and Setsubun on 3 February and the New Year rite on 1 January are also open to the public. The main hall and priests' quarters, both registered, stand within a few paces, and the prefecturally designated Kannon-do is close by.