Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall

What the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall Is

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall (野上八幡宮拝殿, also romanised Nokami Hachimangū Haiden) is the worship hall of a shrine in Obata, Kimino Town, Wakayama Prefecture, built in 1573 and designated an Important Cultural Property on September 5, 1944. It measures 5 bays by 4 bays, stands a single storey high in the Irimoya-zukuri style, and carries a Hongawarabuki roof. Three Munafuda are included in the designation as attached items.

This is the building that meets you at the top of the stone steps. At 5 bays it is the widest structure in the precinct, and it blocks the sanctuary behind it from view. The ceramic tile overhead also sets it apart from its neighbours, every one of which is roofed in cypress bark.

The shrine became a branch sanctuary of Iwashimizu Hachimangū in 987 and drew worshippers across northern Kii. Its buildings burned during the medieval wars and were replaced one by one toward the end of the sixteenth century. The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall went up in 1573, the year after the main sanctuary of 1572.

Why the Worship Hall Was Designated

The Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall was listed on September 5, 1944, together with the main hall and the three auxiliary sanctuaries around it, under designation number 01069. The shared date reflects an assessment of the rebuilt group as a whole rather than of any one building on its own.

A worship hall is the part of a shrine that visitors use, and use wears buildings out. Halls of this type are rebuilt, widened and re-roofed more often than the sanctuaries they shelter, which makes a worship hall still carrying a date of 1573 an uncommon survival.

Three ridge tablets came with the designation, the second largest number among the five buildings here after the five held by the Hirano Imaki auxiliary sanctuary. A munafuda records the date a frame was raised and the people responsible, so a run of three also traces the repairs this hall has been through.

One point of disagreement is worth flagging. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database describes the structure as single-storeyed with an irimoya roof, while the shrine's own website adds the term for a doubled irimoya form. This article follows the designation record.

What to Look For at the Worship Hall

Look up at the tiling first. Hongawarabuki alternates broad flat tiles with rounded cover tiles, and the ridges of shadow this throws read as heavy stripes even from the far end of the precinct. Turn to the main hall behind and the roofing changes entirely, to cypress bark. A tiled worship hall is unusual at a shrine, and it hints at the centuries when this branch sanctuary of Iwashimizu Hachimangū sat close to Buddhist practice as well.

Irimoya is the hipped-and-gabled form: a gable at the top, slopes falling away on all four sides below. Set over a plan of 5 bays by 4, the roof of the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall overhangs so far that from the front the roof surface seems to outweigh the walls beneath it. The bays between the pillars are wide and the interior floor is boarded, so the eye carries straight through.

This is where visitors linger longest. Between the pillars you can catch the cypress-bark roof of the sanctuary behind. The hall is a place of prayer and, at the same time, the frame through which the rest of the group is seen: the three auxiliary sanctuaries stand to either side, all of them listed on the same day in 1944.

Visiting the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall

Facing the head of the approach, the Nogami Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall is the one designated building here that visitors can walk right up to. No fence or gate intervenes, so the depth of the eaves and the sweep of the roof can be read with the naked eye.

• Hours: open every day of the year, with no fixed opening or closing time
• Admission: free
• Prayer rites: accepted 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., arranged by telephone or the enquiry form on the shrine's website
• Photography: hand-held camera and mobile phone snapshots permitted; professional shoots, unauthorised photographs of other worshippers and model shoots are declined
• Parking: four to five spaces, for worshippers only and sometimes closed on festival days

Travelling by rail, start from Kainan Station on the JR Kisei Line. A Daijū bus leaves the station forecourt and takes about 20 minutes to the Nogami Hachimangū stop. Drivers leave the Hanwa Expressway at the Kainan or Kainan-Higashi interchange and follow the Sakai bypass for roughly 15 minutes. Either way, the last stretch is a flight of stone steps. The shrine's website carries no notice of general access to the interior.