Kiyomizu-Dera Temple Main Hall

A Reinforced Concrete Main Hall of 1931

Kiyomizudera Hondo (清水寺本堂, also written Kiyomizu-dera Hondō), the main hall of Otowasan Kiyomizudera in Aoi Ward, Shizuoka City, is a reinforced concrete Buddhist hall completed in 1931 and entered on Japan's national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 7 June 1999. The temple belongs to the Koyasan Shingon school and sits at the western foot of Mount Yatsuyama, a low ridge that runs through the middle of the city. It is not the celebrated Kiyomizudera of Kyoto. The Shizuoka temple borrowed that name in the sixteenth century because the lie of the land here reminded its founders of the Kyoto original, and the two have been confused by visitors ever since.

The hall covers 186 square metres and rises a single storey. Its designer was Koda Minoru (古宇田実), at that time principal of the Kobe Higher Technical School; the Tokyo building firm Shimafuji took the contract.

Concrete was a strange material for a Buddhist hall in 1931, and the choice makes more sense once you know what happened on this hillside. Local accounts record that the great Ansei Tokai earthquake of 1854 left almost every structure in the precinct collapsed or burned, and that the temple never fully rebuilt in the decades that followed. When a new main hall was finally raised in the early Showa years, the builders reached for a material that would not burn and would not shake apart.

Why the Building Was Registered

Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties, introduced in 1996, works differently from the older system of designation. Designation freezes a building under strict controls; registration is lighter, applying to structures roughly fifty years old or more that deserve protection while remaining in everyday use. Kiyomizudera Hondo carries registration number 22-0040 and joined the list in the seventeenth round of registrations, with the formal public notice issued on 19 July 1999. The criterion cited by the Agency for Cultural Affairs is that the building serves as a model of design.

What earned that assessment is the way Koda handled a traditional temple plan in an untraditional material. The front of the hall runs seven bays, carried on round columns rather than the squared posts usual in Japanese temple carpentry. The central three bays are treated with futatesaki, a two-stepped bracket system, which lifts the eaves into something resembling a kohai, the projecting canopy that shelters the worship entrance of a wooden hall. Above all this sits a kirizuma, or gabled, roof. Gabled roofs are rare on main halls, where hipped and hip-and-gable forms dominate, and the Agency's own description singles out this unusual profile.

Two other buildings in the same precinct are registered as well: the kuri, or priests' quarters, of 1931, and the bell tower of 1919. Both are Koda's work, which makes this small hillside temple an unusually complete record of one architect thinking through wood and concrete side by side.

Looking at the Hall Today

Stand back far enough to take in the whole front and the round columns start to look less European than East Asian. The temple explains the resemblance in its own way: successive head priests worked on cultural exchange with China, and the hall acquired a second name, Nikka Shinzen-den, the Hall of Japan-China Friendship. Several local accounts describe the design as Chinese-influenced. The Agency's file does not use that word, so it is best treated as the temple's own reading of a building that resists easy stylistic labels.

Come close and the bracket sets repay attention. Cast in concrete, they reproduce joinery that in a wooden hall would be cut and fitted piece by piece, and the slight softness of the moulded edges gives the game away.

The precinct is open ground and can be walked without charge or appointment during daylight hours. The interior of the hall is another matter: the temple opens more widely for its major observances, among them the New Year rite on 1 January, the bean-throwing of Setsubun on 3 February, the great Kannon festival on 9 July, and the ringing of the bell on New Year's Eve. Anyone hoping to see inside at other times should telephone the temple first on 054-246-9333, since the resident priest is not always present. Photography of the exterior is unrestricted in practice, though the usual courtesy applies during services.

Getting here is simple. Otowacho Station on the Shizuoka Railway line is about a two-minute walk to the south, and the temple is roughly five kilometres from the Shizuoka interchange of the Tomei Expressway. Parking is limited to two spaces, so the train is the sensible choice. Kiyomizuyama Park adjoins the precinct and is known locally for its cherry blossom; the Kannon-do, a prefecturally designated hall said to have been built through the patronage of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1602, stands a short walk away and is opened for temple rites.