Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall

What the Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall is

The Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall (立川稲荷神社拝殿及び幣殿, Tachikawa Inari Jinja Haiden oyobi Heiden) is a shrine building of 1741 at Tachikawa Inari Shrine in Tachikawa-chō, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on December 19, 2014.

It is the only Edo-period building among the three registered at the shrine. Tottori Prefecture explains that it was originally a building of Kitano Shrine, which merged with the local Inari shrine in 1918, and that it was remodeled and extended at the time of that merger. That makes it about 180 years older than the main hall and middle gate of 1921.

A haiden is the hall where worshippers stand to pray; a heiden is the space behind it where offerings are presented to the kami. Here the offering hall projects from the back of the worship hall, and the two are registered together as one building. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a one-storey timber structure with a tiled roof and a building area of 68 square meters, registered at lot 4-68 rather than at the 4-218-2 of the main hall and gate.

Why the worship hall and offering hall were registered

The Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall was registered in the 79th round as number 31-0193, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation, on the same day as the main hall and the middle gate.

The Agency values it as a worship hall that concentrates its ornament on the front. The hall is three bays wide and three deep, nearly square, with a hip-and-gable roof (Irimoya-zukuri) turned so that a gable faces the approach (Tsumairi), finished in interlocking pan tiles (Sangawara-buki). A veranda runs around it, the offering hall extends from the rear, and the gable is filled with a latticework screen of the kind called Kitsure-goshi.

Set beside the austere main hall of 1921, it lets you compare mid-Edo and early twentieth-century shrine carpentry within a single precinct. The decision to keep Kitano Shrine's hall and adapt it for the merged shrine is itself part of the story the building tells.

Looking at the Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall

Everything here is about the front. Beneath the gable end of the roof, an entrance porch (Kōhai) juts forward under a karahafu, the cusped gable that swells in the middle and flicks up at the ends. Its curve softens the weight of the tiled roof above.

Look closely at the porch. Two Kaerumata, the frog-leg shaped blocks set between beams, are stacked one above the other, and the projecting beam ends (Kibana) are carved. The Agency sums this up as raising the density of decoration on the facade. Standing under the porch and looking up is the easiest way to see how the two kaerumata sit together.

Inside, the building is a single room, but the floor of the offering hall at the back is raised a step and given a coffered ceiling (Gō-tenjō), separating it from the worship space. The interior is closed, so the arrangement is read from outside: viewed from the side, the Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall shows the offering hall pushing out behind the main block.

Visiting the Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall

Tottori Prefecture states that the exterior of the Tachikawa Inari Shrine Worship Hall and Offering Hall may be viewed freely and that the interior is not open to the public. Because it stands directly at the top of the stone steps, the carved porch and stacked kaerumata can be seen at close range from the spot where visitors pray.

No photography rules are published. This is where people come to pray, so take care not to get in the way of other worshippers or of rituals. Directions and general visiting information are on the Tachikawa Inari Shrine page.