Jizo-Ji Temple Daishi Hall

The Hall Every Pilgrim Visits Second

Jizoji Daishido (地蔵寺大師堂, also written Jizō-ji Daishi-dō), the hall dedicated to Kōbō Daishi at Jizoji temple in Itano Town, Itano District, Tokushima Prefecture, was built in the Shōtoku era (1711 to 1716), remodelled in the closing decades of the Edo period, and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on 26 January 2011.

It faces the main hall across the precinct from the east. That arrangement is worth understanding before you arrive, because it governs how the temple is used. On the Shikoku pilgrimage a visit is not complete after one set of prayers. Pilgrims recite first at the hondō, before the temple's principal image, then cross to the daishidō and recite again before Kūkai, the ninth-century monk posthumously titled Kōbō Daishi who is held to accompany every walker on the route. Two halls, two liturgies, in that order.

So the Daishi hall at any of the eighty-eight temples carries heavy traffic, and at Jizoji it was built to look the part.

Decoration Where You Can See It

The structure is three bays by three, with an irimoya hip-and-gable roof in hongawarabuki tile, and a floor area of about 96 square metres. Attached at the centre of the front is a one-bay kōhai canopy over the steps, and its gable takes the karahafu form: the undulating cusped curve, rising at the centre and sweeping down at the edges, that Japanese carpenters reserved for entrances meant to be noticed.

Above the columns sit hira-mitsudo brackets, a straightforward three-block bracket set, and the eaves are futanoki shigedaruki, double-tiered with closely ranked rafters. Between the bracketing, carved ranma transom panels fill the openings. Stand under the canopy and look up rather than straight ahead; this is where the building spends its budget.

The interior is divided by a line of pillars and low partition walls set one bay in from the rear, screening a zushi, the miniature shrine cabinet that holds the image of the Daishi. Overhead, the ceiling is a kagami-tenjō, a flat panelled surface without visible battens, and it is painted. The subject is tennyo, celestial women, shown in flight.

A painted ceiling in a hall this size is not a given. The Agency for Cultural Affairs record singles out the strength of the decorative programme, and the phrase covers the whole package: the curved canopy gable, the carved transoms, the painted ceiling. Compare it with the main hall opposite, whose record notes plain square pillars and simple shaped brackets at the corners, and the contrast in intent is clear.

Two Dates in One Building

The registration record gives the date as the Shōtoku era with remodelling between 1830 and 1868. Both dates matter for a building on this site.

Jizoji traces its founding to 821, by tradition at the imperial request of Emperor Saga, with Kūkai carving a small armoured Jizō image barely five and a half centimetres tall as the principal object of worship. The temple prospered under successive courts and warrior patrons and is said to have held some three hundred branch temples across Awa, Sanuki, and Iyo. In the Tenshō years, between 1573 and 1592, the campaign of Chōsokabe Motochika through the province destroyed the buildings entirely.

The Shōtoku-era construction is therefore the recovery: the main hall and this Daishi hall raised together in the 1710s, more than a century after the burning. The later remodelling, in the last decades of Tokugawa rule, is when much of the visible decoration is likely to have taken its present form. Read that way, the hall records two separate impulses, one to rebuild and one to embellish, held in a single frame.

Registration in 2011 covered five buildings at Jizoji together, numbered 36-0089 to 36-0093, with the Daishi hall at 36-0091. Its criterion is contribution to the historical landscape of the nation. Registration, introduced in 1996, is a lighter instrument than the designation system that produces Important Cultural Properties: changes are notified rather than licensed, and the aim is to keep buildings working rather than to seal them.

Practical Notes for a Visit

Entry to the Jizoji precinct is free and the grounds are open through the day; the stamp office runs from 7:00 to 17:00. The Daishi hall stands on the right-hand side as you come through the Niōmon gate, past the great ginkgo, with the Awashimadō nearby. The image of the Daishi can be viewed from the front of the hall, and the painted ceiling is visible from the same position if the light is good.

Photography of the precinct is generally accepted. For interiors and enshrined images, ask at the stamp office rather than assume; that is the courteous default at working pilgrimage temples and it takes ten seconds.

Do not confuse this hall with the Daishidō that forms one arm of the Five Hundred Rakan hall on the hill behind, 200 metres north and reached by stone steps. That upper hall is part of a separate registered building and carries a 200 yen admission.

Getting to the temple: JR Kōtoku Line to Itano Station, then about 3.4 kilometres, roughly ten minutes by taxi. Tokushima Bus on the Kajiyabara route stops at Rakan, some 300 metres away. By road, Itano Interchange on the Takamatsu Expressway is about 5 kilometres out and Aizumi Interchange on the Tokushima Expressway about 6. Parking in front of the gate is free, and it is generously sized, which matters because tour coaches on the pilgrimage circuit use it.

The temple's large goma fire ritual takes place on the first Sunday of March.