Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall

A Sukiya Gate on the Temple Road

Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall (一木旅館門及び塀, Ichiki Ryokan Mon oyobi Hei) is the gate and street wall of Ichiki Ryokan, facing south onto the pilgrims' road to Chōhōji temple in Kami, Shimotsu-cho, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture; built around 1937, it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on June 29, 2022. The gate and wall are registered together as a single item, classed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as a structure other than a building.

The gate is a gabled udegimon, a gate whose roof rests on bracket arms projecting from its posts, 1.7 metres wide and roofed in cedar bark. The timber wall runs 20 metres in all. It is the first thing anyone walking the road sees of Ichiki Ryokan, and of the five registered structures it is the only one that can be seen in full from outside.

Modern Japanese Style at the Street Edge

Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall dates from the same 1937 expansion as the Entrance Building and the New Building. A stone-paved path runs from the gate through the front garden to the Entrance Building, and the gate was planned as the new front door of an enlarged inn.

The Agency describes it as a refined, sukiya-minded gate and wall in the modern Japanese style that lends charm to the temple road. Japanese-style architecture of the early Shōwa era kept traditional forms as its base but brought a new taste to the choice of materials and the play of details. Cedar-bark roofing, knotted posts and split logs are exactly that kind of material choice.

The registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the country. The gate and wall are valued together as part of what gives the road to Chōhōji its character.

What to Look For

At the gate, look first at the posts. The Agency calls them debushi posts: the knots where branches were trimmed have been left standing proud of the surface rather than planed away. The doors are bi-fold board doors, each leaf folding as it opens. The cedar-bark roof has a softer, thicker edge than tile or copper would give.

Then look down. Black Nachiguro stones are set into the ground beneath the gate, the same stone scattered across the entry floor of the Entrance Building farther in.

Read the wall from the top down. Its coping is sangawara-buki tile with copper sheeting only at the eaves edge. The wall itself is shinkabe construction, with the timber posts left exposed, finished in white shikkui plaster and pierced here and there by small square windows. Along the base runs a skirting of logs split in half lengthwise, setting a row of rounded shadows beneath the plaster. Anywhere along its 20 metres, Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall rewards a close look.

Seeing Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall

Ichiki Ryokan Gate and Wall fronts the pilgrims' road and can be viewed from the street. It faces south, so for much of the day sunlight falls across the white plaster and the split-log skirting and the details are easy to read.

Going through the gate is limited to people dining at Ichiki Ryokan, which now operates as a restaurant. We found no published photography policy; when photographing from the road, keep clear of traffic and of the restaurant's entrance.