Kubo Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall (Choya)

What the Kubo Hachiman Worship Hall Is

Kubo Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall (Choya) (窪八幡神社拝殿（庁屋）), in Kita, Yamanashi City, Yamanashi Prefecture, is a worship hall dated to around 1557 and designated an Important Cultural Property on February 18, 1949. It faces the main hall and stretches eleven bays wide.

The hall measures 11 by 3 bays under a single-storey Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of Hiwadabuki cypress bark. The word chōya (庁屋) in its official name means an office building, the place where the shrine's business was handled, much like the shrine office of today.

Two records bear on its date. The shrine chronicle Ōimata Jinja Hongi says Takeda Harunobu (Takeda Shingen) had it rebuilt in 1553, in thanks for success in his campaign against Murakami Yoshikiyo of Shinano. An ink inscription found on a roof strut gives the year 1557, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs uses that year.

Why the Kubo Hachiman Worship Hall Matters

The Kubo Hachiman worship hall is not symmetrical from side to side, and its floor sits unusually low for a shrine worship hall. Yamanashi City reads these features as signs that the building served as the shrine's chōya. A sixteenth-century hall that combined worship with shrine administration is a rare survival.

The designation also covers one attached waniguchi, the flat bronze gong hung over the offering box. Its front is inscribed with the year of the chronicle's rebuilding and its back with the year of the ink inscription, so the two dates sit on the two faces of one object.

Its eleven-bay width answers the eleven-bay Nagare-zukuri main hall behind it. Since the main hall itself is said to have no parallel, a worship hall and main hall facing each other at the same eleven bays is hard to match anywhere else.

What to Look For at the Kubo Hachiman Worship Hall

At the top of the stone steps, the long front of the Kubo Hachiman worship hall fills the view. With 11 bays in a row, you have to step back some distance to take it in whole.

Then walk to either end. The gable ends show the plain triangle of a kirizuma roof, and the contrast with the hip-and-gable Irimoya-zukuri roof of the Wakamiya Hachiman worship hall, its neighbor to the north, is immediate. The Wakamiya hall is about twenty years older.

The low floor is easy to check from outside. The veranda runs close to the ground and the space under the eaves is kept low, which is the feature Yamanashi City singles out as setting this hall apart from ordinary worship halls.

Visiting the Kubo Hachiman Worship Hall

Prayers are offered at the front of Kubo Hachiman Shrine Worship Hall (Choya). The interior is used for rites and prayers and is normally viewed from outside. A path runs round the building, so you can see both gable ends and how the hall lines up with the main hall behind it.

Directions to the shrine and general visiting information are gathered on the Kubo Hachiman Shrine page.