Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall

A Hall for Kobo Daishi Built in 1863

The Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall (大山寺大師堂, Taisan-ji Daishidō) is a hall dedicated to Kobo Daishi, built in 1863 at Taisanji Temple in Kamiita Town, Tokushima Prefecture, and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan on January 26, 2011, under registration number 36-0095.

A daishido enshrines Kobo Daishi (Kukai), the founder of the Shingon school, and on Shikoku, where pilgrims follow in his footsteps, temples usually set one beside the main hall. The Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall stands north of the main hall and, like it, faces east. A corridor joins the two.

It is a small building, 3 bays across the front and 2 bays deep, with a building area of 34 square meters and a roof now covered in sheet iron. It was repaired in 1985.

Why a "Standard" Hall Was Registered

The Agency for Cultural Affairs sums up the Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall as a standard hall for Kobo Daishi built at the end of the Edo period, and that is the heart of its value. It was not registered for anything unusual. It shows, intact, what a daishido in Shikoku was expected to look like in the final years of the shogunate. Its registration ground is its contribution to the historic landscape, and it shares that role with the main hall beside it.

Its date is also the most precise of the four registered buildings at Taisanji. The main hall is placed within the middle Edo period, and the corridor and bell tower gate within its closing decades, but the Daishido Hall is pinned to a single year, 1863 (Bunkyu 3). A firmly dated building gives a fixed point for thinking about the dates of its neighbors.

Pyramidal Roof, Square Posts and Clustered Rafters

The Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall has a Hōgyō-zukuri roof, its four slopes rising to a single point at the top. A one-bay Kōhai porch projects at the front, a veranda wraps the front and both sides, and a Shumidan altar platform is attached at the back.

The detailing is restrained. The posts are square rather than round, and each carries a Demitsudo bracket set, a block projecting forward from the post with three bearing blocks on top. The eaves have a single layer of rafters laid in the fukiyose manner: instead of being spaced evenly, the rafters are gathered into small groups, typically pairs, with wider gaps between the groups. Look up at the underside of the eaves and the rhythm of those groups is easy to follow.

Inside, the Daishido Hall is one undivided room with a wooden floor, under a Saobuchi-tenjō ceiling of boards held by thin, evenly spaced battens.

Seeing the Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall

The Taisanji Temple Daishido Hall stands at the north end of the row of buildings that begins with the main hall; walk along the front of the corridor and you arrive at it. Its front and porch face the open ground to the east, and stepping back a little from there is the best way to take in the pointed roof. The temple publishes no information on entering the hall, so pray from beneath the porch and keep clear during services.

To see the fukiyose rafters, stand beside the porch and look up at the eaves along the side of the hall. From there you can compare the rafters of the porch roof with those of the hall itself.