Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall

A 1959 Hall Beside the Shrine Office

The Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall (長田神社祈祷殿, Nagata Jinja Kitōden) is a 1959 building standing beside the shrine office just in front of the Shinmon gate of Nagata Shrine in Higashimachi 1-chome, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, facing west; it was altered in 2007 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 2 November 2018. It is the newest of the eight registered structures and, at 46 square metres, the largest.

The building measures 7.9 metres by 4.9 metres under a gabled copper roof, entered from the gable end in the manner called Tsumairi. A porch with a karahafu-like bowed roof projects at the front, and at the back a bay for the household-style altar, the kamidana, juts out.

Keeper of the 1924 Office Porch

The Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall is registration number 31-0252, listed for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs sees it as showing how the scene in front of the gate was modernised. Together with the purification pavilion across the approach, it frames the space before the Shinmon gate.

The bowed porch has a story. According to the shrine, when the shrine office was rebuilt in 2007, the karahafu entrance porch of the old office, built at the time of the 1924 move, was transferred to this hall to preserve it. The Agency's note of "alterations in 2007" appears to refer to this work.

So the Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall is a 1959 building wearing a 1924 front. The office of the relocation era is gone, but its face survives here.

What to Look For at the Prayer Hall

Begin with the porch on the Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall. The bowed roof pushes out in front of the plain gable and softens the whole building. Knowing it once framed the entrance to the 1920s office, you may find its curve a little old-fashioned beside the rest.

Walk round to the side and you see the altar bay projecting from the back, a place for the deity pushed out beyond the main volume so that the interior plan can be read from outside.

Inside, according to the Agency, the floor is laid with tatami, and the rear 5 mats are raised a step to form an inner sanctum. A main room with a raised sanctum beyond it is a plan made for holding prayers.

Visiting the Prayer Hall

The Nagata Shrine Prayer Hall stands next to the shrine office before the Shinmon gate, and its exterior can be seen from the approach. Tottori Prefecture lists the interior as closed. The shrine's prayer guide describes ceremonies as taking place in the worship hall, and gives no occasion for entering the prayer hall.

Ordinary souvenir photography is allowed. Because the hall is beside the shrine office, keep clear of people coming and going for charms and other items. Directions and general visiting information are on the Nagata Shrine page.