Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Takeuchi Shrine Main Hall

What the Takeuchi Auxiliary Sanctuary Is

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Takeuchi Shrine Main Hall (野上八幡宮摂社武内神社本殿) is the sanctuary of an auxiliary shrine at Nogami Hachiman Shrine in Obata, Kimino Town, Wakayama Prefecture, built around 1572 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 Takeuchi Jinja Honden. The building is a single-bay sanctuary in the Nagare-zukuri style with a Hiwadabuki roof, and one Munafuda is included in the designation as an attached item.

An auxiliary shrine, or sessha, houses a deity closely bound to the one worshipped in the main sanctuary and stands inside the same precinct. Three such sanctuaries share this hilltop with the main shrine buildings, and all three are designated. The Takeuchi sanctuary takes the smallest form of the group: ikkensha, a frontage one pillar-bay wide.

Nogami Hachiman Shrine became a branch sanctuary of Iwashimizu Hachimangū in 987. Fire in the medieval wars took its buildings, and replacements went up across the closing decades of the sixteenth century. This auxiliary sanctuary is among the earliest of them.

Why the Takeuchi Sanctuary Was Designated

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Takeuchi Shrine Main Hall was designated an Important Cultural Property on September 5, 1944, alongside the main hall, the worship hall and the two other auxiliary sanctuaries in the precinct. Its designation number is 01070.

Single-bay nagare-zukuri sanctuaries were built in enormous numbers across Japan, which is exactly why old ones are scarce. A small building is cheap to replace, so when one decayed it was usually rebuilt rather than repaired. That this one still shows its late sixteenth-century form owes much to its having been maintained as part of a set with the larger halls around it.

The dating carries a qualification worth noticing. Both the Agency for Cultural Affairs database and the Wakayama prefectural list give the year as approximately 1572, leaving the figure deliberately loose, while the shrine's own website states 1572 flatly. The single ridge tablet attached to the designation evidently allows more than one reading. This article follows the wording of the designation record and keeps the approximation.

What to Look For at the Takeuchi Sanctuary

Begin with the scale. There is one bay across the front and a single door, a sanctuary no wider than an adult's outstretched arms, and over it sits the same style of roof used on the main hall. The covering is cypress bark, laid in thin overlapping sheets; on a building this small, the individual layers register far more distinctly than they do on a large roof.

In nagare-zukuri only the front slope runs long, reaching out over the steps. On a single-bay sanctuary that forward slope takes up a much greater share of the whole, so the roof looks as though it were gathering the little building up beneath it. Set the Takeuchi sanctuary against the three-bay main hall of Nogami Hachiman Shrine and the same style reads completely differently once the width changes.

One more detail rewards a slow walk. This sanctuary and the main hall are both roofed in cypress bark, yet the neighbouring Kora Tamadare sanctuary uses thick wooden shingle instead. Why small halls raised at much the same moment, in one precinct, took different roofing is not recorded. Following the roofs alone from building to building makes a short and rewarding circuit.

Visiting the Takeuchi Auxiliary Sanctuary

Because the building is small, it helps to know where to look. The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Auxiliary Takeuchi Shrine Main Hall is one of the halls ranged around the worship hall: pause where the stone steps end, glance left and right, and it appears. No railing keeps you back, so you can walk up close.

No time limit governs entry to the precinct and nothing is charged. Only formal prayer rites keep set hours, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., arranged in advance by telephone or through the enquiry form on the shrine's website. On access to the interior the site says nothing at all.

Photographs taken with a hand-held camera or a phone raise no objection. What the shrine does refuse is a commemorative shoot with a professional photographer, pictures of other worshippers taken without asking, and any kind of model shoot.

There are two ways to arrive. Ride a Daijū bus about 20 minutes from Kainan Station on the JR Kisei Line and get off at Nogami Hachimangū. Otherwise, leave the Hanwa Expressway at the Kainan or Kainan-Higashi interchange and drive the Sakai bypass for around 15 minutes. Parking on site is limited to four or five vehicles, reserved for worshippers, and may be unavailable on festival days.