Maniji Main Hall

What is the Maniji Main Hall?

The Maniji Main Hall (摩尼寺本堂, Maniji Hondō) is a Buddhist worship hall built in 1860 in the precinct of Maniji Temple in Kakuji, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, and it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 19, 2014.

The hall faces south. It is 3 bays wide and 4 bays deep under a hip-and-gable (Irimoya-zukuri) roof of interlocking pantiles (Sangawara-buki), and the Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its building area as 151 square meters, the largest of the three registered buildings at Maniji Temple. You reach it by climbing 303 stone steps and passing through the main gate, which opens straight onto its front.

The date comes from the roof space. In 2013 a survey team from Tottori University of Environmental Studies found a ridge tablet (Munafuda) recording the raising of "a hall for Taishakuten." One face is dated the third month of Ansei 7, the other the sixth month of Man'en 1. Both refer to 1860: the era name changed partway through that year, so the carpenters' tablet carries two. As the inscription says, the Maniji Main Hall was built to house Taishakuten, the temple's principal deity.

Why the Maniji Main Hall was registered

The hall was entered in the 79th round of registrations as number 31-0195, under the criterion of serving as a model of design. The gate and bell tower registered the same day were listed for their contribution to the landscape. The Maniji Main Hall was singled out for the building itself.

What the Agency for Cultural Affairs points to is the density of the ornament. A triangular dormer gable (Chidori-hafu) sits on the front of the roof, and below it a one-bay porch (Kōhai) projects under a curved cusped gable (Noki-karahafu). The porch, the boundary between the outer worship space (Gejin) and the inner sanctum (Naijin), and the area around the altar are crowded with carvings of dragons, birds, beasts, clouds and waves. The agency reads this as typical of the closing years of the Edo period.

The plan is distinctive too. Only the front bay is given to worshippers; the altar is pushed toward the back so that the inner sanctum becomes a single room of 30 tatami mats under a coffered ceiling (Gō-tenjō), with no columns apart from those flanking the shrine cabinet. The 2015 survey report records 16 round columns, all of zelkova, the thickest about 40 centimeters across. Their tapered tops and the board-like plates laid over them are details borrowed from the Zen style (Zenshūyō).

An earlier hall can be compared directly. A scenic guide to Inaba dated 1858 shows a very similar building on the same spot, but without the dormer gable, and with a plain gabled roof over the porch instead of the curved one. The survey team takes that picture to show the first hall built after the temple moved down from the summit in the 18th century. If so, the 1860 rebuilding was the moment the front became so elaborate.

What to look for at the Maniji Main Hall

Start with the porch. The tie beams between its posts are carved all over with clouds and waves, with a coiling cloud dragon at the center. The beam ends (Kibana) that poke out past the posts are carved as a baku, a mythical dream-eating beast, on the tie beam, and as a lion on the curved (Ebi-kōryō) beams. The survey notes scroll and leaf patterns on those curved beams as well, but they sit high up and are hard to make out from the ground.

Then step back and look at how the gables stack. The broad hip-and-gable roof carries the triangular dormer gable on its face, and below that comes the undulating curve of the porch roof. That layering is exactly what the 1860 builders added to the older design.

Notice, too, that the Maniji Main Hall does not quite line up with the steps and gate. Pause just inside the gate and the front of the hall appears turned a few degrees off center. The survey points out that the hall has stood in this spot since at least 1858, which suggests the steps and gate were set out afterward on a slightly different line.

Finally, look at the veranda. A half-bay-wide deck runs across the front and both sides, edged with a railing capped by onion-shaped finials; according to the survey, the finials are inscribed with the Man'en era date. At the back, a covered corridor crosses to the priests' quarters.

Visiting the Maniji Main Hall

The Maniji Main Hall stands at the back of the precinct, and you see its whole front as soon as you pass through the gate. The temple's website gives visiting hours of 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Good viewpoints are directly in front of the porch and from the east and west sides, where the length of the roof shows how the hall runs back from a single front bay to the deep inner sanctum.

Neither the temple's website nor the city's tourism pages say how far visitors may go inside the hall or whether photography is allowed. If you hope to see the altar platform and carved transoms of the inner sanctum, ask at the temple office first, and do not take pictures inside during services. Directions and general visiting information are on the Maniji Temple page.