Shinkoin Temple Front Gate

A 1743 Temple Gate at the Foot of Tokyo Tower

Walk up the quiet back lane below Tokyo Tower in Higashi-Azabu, and a small vermilion gate appears against the steel lattice rising overhead. This is the front gate of Shinkō-in, a Pure Land Buddhist temple in Minato, Tokyo. The gate was built in 1743, in the middle of the Edo period, and it is by far the oldest structure on the grounds. The main hall behind it dates only to 1955, and Tokyo Tower, which now seems to grow straight out of the temple roof, was not completed until 1958.

Shinkō-in began as a study hall within Zōjō-ji, the great Pure Land temple that became the funerary temple of the Tokugawa shoguns. In 1695 it was raised to the status of a branch temple, or betsuin, dedicated to memorial services for Tokugawa Hidetada, the second shogun. The gate you see today was carried over from the temple's earlier site near Akabanebashi when the whole institution relocated in 1950, after wartime bombing and a postwar land readjustment scattered the old precinct.

Why the Gate Is Registered

In 2001 the front gate was entered on Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties, under registration number 13-0118. The registration system, created in 1996, protects buildings of value that fall outside the older and stricter categories of National Treasure and Important Cultural Property. A registered building is recognized for its merit while remaining in active everyday use, which suits a working temple gate that people still walk through each day. Shinkō-in's gate was listed as a model of its design type, a phrase the Agency for Cultural Affairs reserves for structures that show a form worth studying.

What earned that recognition is a particular kind of refinement. The gate is a shikyakumon, literally a four-legged gate: a central pair of structural pillars steadied by four supporting posts, two in front and two behind. Among surviving Japanese temple gates this is the most formal type, historically reserved for the main entrances of high-ranking temples and for gates that received imperial envoys. For a branch of the Tokugawa family temple, the choice carried weight.

The carpentry rewards a slow look. The roof is laid in formal pan-and-cover tile, and the pillars are all cut to the same height, giving the front a calm, level line. Under the eaves the rafters run in two tiers, set in close-grouped pairs rather than at even spacing, a more ornamental rhythm than a plain gate would use. The horizontal tie-beam across the pillar tops is shaped into a tall arched member, a rainbow beam, that lifts the whole composition and marks the gate as the product of a sophisticated workshop. These touches, the official commentary notes, show one face of how branch-temple gates were designed in the Edo capital.

What to Look for When You Visit

Stand a few steps back before you pass through. The gate measures only about 2.8 meters across the front, modest by the standard of the great temple gates a short walk away at Zōjō-ji, yet the proportions read as deliberate rather than small. Follow the line of the rafters up into the eaves and you can pick out the paired spacing and the two-tier depth. The arched tie-beam over the pillars is the detail most worth finding, since it is the feature the registration singles out.

Then look up. Framing a centuries-old wooden gate against the orange and white of Tokyo Tower is the reason many visitors come, and the contrast is genuine: a structure built when Edo was a city of wood, standing directly beneath one of the symbols of postwar Tokyo. Morning light tends to fall cleanly on the gate's painted timber, while evening brings the tower's illumination into the same frame. Overhead cables do cross the view from some angles, so it is worth moving a few steps to find a clean line.

Inside the small precinct, a roofed shrine holds the memory of Otake, a working woman of Edo remembered for her humility and later venerated as a manifestation of the Dainichi Buddha. Keishōin, the mother of the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi, is said to have sent a gift to the temple in tribute to her. The grounds are compact and well kept, and a quiet visit takes only a few minutes.

Around the Area

Shinkō-in sits within easy reach of the cluster of sights around Shiba Park. Zōjō-ji, the parent temple, is a short walk north; its main gate, the Sangedatsumon of the early 1600s, survived the same war that destroyed most of the complex and is itself an Important Cultural Property, making a natural pairing with the smaller branch gate. Tokyo Tower's observation decks are essentially next door, and Shiba Park offers open green space between the two. The well-known tofu restaurant Tofuya Ukai lies just below the tower for a longer meal. The temple has taken part in the annual Tokyo Cultural Properties Week, when buildings not usually open are shown to the public.