Ube Shrine Main Hall

What Is the Ube Shrine Main Hall?

The Ube Shrine Main Hall (宇倍神社本殿, Ube Jinja Honden) is the sanctuary building of Ube Shrine, the leading shrine of old Inaba Province, in Kokufu-cho Miyanoshita, Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture; it was built in 1898 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 6 March 2024. Its registration number is 31-0283, and it was registered under the criterion of serving as a model of architectural form.

The hall faces east. It is a single-storey timber building with a Hiwadabuki roof of layered cypress bark and a building area of 31 square meters. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records an alteration in 1908. The shrine explains that its main hall was rebuilt several times after the buildings burned in the late sixteenth century, and that the present Ube Shrine Main Hall is the rebuilding of 1898.

It stands at the center of an enclosure behind the worship hall and offering hall, ringed by a Sukibei lattice fence.

Gabled Roof, Side Entrance and a Front Canopy

The agency describes the Ube Shrine Main Hall as a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled building entered on the long side (Hirairi). It is one bay across the front, three bays across the back and two bays deep, with a one-bay Kōhai canopy over the steps at the front. The posts carry plain Funahijiki boat-shaped brackets, the gable ends use the simple Inoko-sasu truss, and the eaves have two tiers of closely spaced Taruki rafters.

A veranda with a Kōran railing runs all the way around the building, and a Hama-en platform is set under the canopy.

The shrine's own grounds guide describes the hall a little differently, as a three-bay Nagare-zukuri building, three bays wide and two deep, with a canopy across the central bay and Chigi and Katsuogi on the ridge. Nagare-zukuri is itself a gabled, side-entrance type, so the style names agree; the bay count across the front does not. This article follows the agency's figure and notes the shrine's count alongside it.

Restraint, and a Chrysanthemum Crest

Anyone who has seen the richly carved shrines elsewhere in Japan will find the Ube Shrine Main Hall plain. The brackets are the simplest kind, and the gable truss is an old, unornamented form. The agency sums the building up as a hall that keeps decoration in check while dignifying its doors with a chrysanthemum crest.

For a shrine that ranked among the national shrines of the Meiji state, that choice is deliberate. The Ube Shrine Main Hall carries its status through proportion and the weight of its bark roof rather than ornament, which is a reasonable reading of why the agency registered it as a model of form for a late Meiji shrine sanctuary.

The crest on the doors is easy to miss from a distance. Look for it on the front doors under the canopy.

Seeing the Ube Shrine Main Hall

The Ube Shrine Main Hall stands inside the lattice fence. Visitors cannot enter the enclosure or see the interior, so the hall is viewed from outside the fence, to the left and right of the worship hall. The fence has lattice windows, and through the slats you can make out the veranda and railing.

The bark roof and the chigi and katsuogi rise above the fence, so step back rather than pressing up against it; the shape of the roof reads more clearly from a few paces away. Please do not take photos while a ceremony is going on in the worship hall. Directions and general visiting information are on the Ube Shrine page.