Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Hirano Imaki Shrine Main Hall

What the Hirano Imaki Auxiliary Sanctuary Is

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Hirano Imaki Shrine Main Hall (野上八幡宮摂社平野今木神社本殿) is the sanctuary of an auxiliary shrine at Nogami Hachiman Shrine in Obata, Kimino Town, Wakayama Prefecture, raised in either 1572 or 1573 and designated an Important Cultural Property on September 5, 1944.

The shrine romanises its own title as Nokami Hachimangū, so the designated name also appears as Nokami Hachimangū Sessha Hirano Imaki Jinja Honden, and the shrine calls this hall the Wakamiya. It is a three-bay sanctuary in the Nagare-zukuri style with a Hiwadabuki roof, and five Munafuda are included in the designation as attached items.

Of the three auxiliary sanctuaries on this hilltop, only this one has a frontage three bays wide. The other two are single-bay halls. In plan, the Hirano Imaki sanctuary matches the main hall of the shrine itself, and that equality of width says something about the standing it has been given.

Nogami Hachiman Shrine became a branch sanctuary of Iwashimizu Hachimangū in 987 and drew worshippers from across northern Kii on the strength of its estates. Its buildings burned in the medieval wars and were replaced over the following decades. This auxiliary sanctuary belongs to that rebuilding.

A One-Year Disagreement in the Records

Sources do not agree on the year the Hirano Imaki sanctuary was built, and the gap is exactly one year. Anyone comparing this page against a signboard on site or another account deserves to know why.

• The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives the era-year as Genki 3 but records the Western year as 1573. Genki 3 corresponds to 1572, so the two fields in the same record disagree with each other.
• The Wakayama prefectural list gives Genki 3, placing the building in the Muromachi period.
• The shrine's own website gives 1573, the first year of the Tenshō era.

Genki was the era immediately preceding Tenshō, and the change of era name fell in 1573. The question matters here because the main hall of Nogami Hachiman Shrine is dated to Genki 3 and its worship hall to the first year of Tenshō, so this sanctuary sits at the join between the two. That five ridge tablets survive, rather than one, is probably not unrelated: more than one date has come down with the building. No source at present carries enough weight to rule the others out.

Why the Hirano Imaki Sanctuary Was Designated

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Hirano Imaki Shrine Main Hall was designated an Important Cultural Property on September 5, 1944, together with the main hall, the worship hall and the two other auxiliary sanctuaries. Its designation number is 01071.

The count of attached ridge tablets sets this building apart. Five came with the designation, more than any other structure in the precinct and well ahead of the single tablet held by the main hall and the three held by the worship hall. A munafuda records the date a frame was raised along with the patron and the carpenter, and a fresh board tends to be added at each major repair. Five of them trace a long sequence of care.

The three-bay plan counts too. Auxiliary sanctuaries built at the same scale and in the same style as the main sanctuary they accompany are not common. Without this hall, the group here would read as a large shrine with small satellites; with it, the arrangement looks more like two sanctuaries of comparable rank sharing a hilltop.

What to Look For at the Hirano Imaki Sanctuary

Hunt for the carving. The shrine publishes several photographs of dragon and tiger carvings on this hall. Shrine buildings of the late medieval and Momoyama decades increasingly carried beasts and mythical creatures worked into the beam ends and gables, and finding that quantity of carving on a small auxiliary sanctuary is another measure of the regard it received.

The roof is cypress bark, as on the main hall. Because a three-bay building is wider, the long forward slope of the nagare-zukuri form describes a slower, more relaxed curve than it does on the single-bay sanctuaries nearby. Walk from one to the other and the same style transforms simply by changing the number of bays.

Keep the name Wakamiya in mind as well. Read the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Hirano Imaki Shrine Main Hall as a wakamiya, a junior sanctuary, and the relationship between the halls stops looking like a matter of size and starts looking like an order rooted in the history of the shrine.

Visiting the Hirano Imaki Auxiliary Sanctuary

Nothing needs arranging in advance. The precinct stands open, no offering is required at the gate, and the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Hirano Imaki Shrine Main Hall is seen from outside, though close enough to make out the carving. The shrine's website says nothing about entering the building.

If the carvings are what you have come for, pick your hour. Around midday, when the sun is high enough to reach under the eaves, serves best. Photography itself is allowed with a hand-held camera or a phone. What is refused is a commemorative shoot with a professional photographer, pictures of other worshippers taken without asking, and model shoots.

Formal prayer rites are received between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., every day of the year, on prior contact by telephone or through the enquiry form on the shrine's website.

For transport, a Daijū bus from Kainan Station on the JR Kisei Line takes about 20 minutes to the Nogami Hachimangū stop. Drivers exit the Hanwa Expressway at Kainan or Kainan-Higashi and follow the Sakai bypass for some 15 minutes. Four or five parking spaces sit on site, reserved for worshippers and occasionally closed on festival days.