is a
Shinto shrine
A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion.
The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...
in
Aoba-ku,
Sendai
is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the List of cities in Japan, twelfth most populated city in Japan.
...
,
Miyagi,
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
. The has been designated a
National Treasure of Japan.
History
The construction of the present ''shaden'' was ordered by the wealthy ''
daimyō
were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...
''
Date Masamune
was a Japanese ''daimyō'' during the Azuchi–Momoyama period through the early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful feudal lords in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he w ...
. He hired craftsmen from
Kyoto
Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
and central Japan, some of whom had previously worked for the
Toyotomi family. The shrine was erected between 1604 and 1607. The lavish decoration with wood carving, painting, metal fittings, and lacquer emulated recent models from central Japan, in particular, the
Toyokuni shrine in Kyoto. Since the early
Meiji period
The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...
the shrine was called Ōsaki Hachiman Jinja. In consideration of historical circumstances, its original name was reinstated in June 1997. On November 22, 1952, the ''shaden'' was designated as a National Treasure.
Architecture
The ''shaden'' is one of the oldest extant examples of , also known as ''
gongen-zukuri'' (権現造), and an outstanding work of
Azuchi–Momoyama architecture. It is a single-storied structure consisting of a main sanctuary (''
honden
In Shinto shrine architecture, the , also called , or sometimes as in Ise Shrine's case, is the most sacred building at a Shinto shrine, intended purely for the use of the enshrined ''kami'', usually symbolized by a mirror or sometimes by a sta ...
'') and a worship hall (''
haiden'') which are joined via a connecting passage called ''ishi-no-ma''. All three structures are under a single roof which is covered with thin
shake shingles (''kokerabuki'' 柿葺) made from Japanese cypress.
The ''honden'' is a 5
ken (間, bay) by 3 ken structure with a hip-and-gable,
irimoya
The East Asian hip-and-gable roof (''Xiēshān'' (歇山) in Chinese, ''Paljakjibung'' (팔작지붕) in Korean and ''Irimoya'' (入母屋) in Japanese) also known as 'resting hill roof', consists of a hip roof that slopes down on all four side ...
style roof to which a simple
gabled roof of the 3 ken by 1 ken ''ishi-no-ma'' connects. The ''haiden'' is also 3 ken deep and 7 ken wide. Its roof is like that of the ''honden'' of the hip-and-gable type. On the front it has an attached triangular
dormer
A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window.
Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...
with a decorative
bargeboard
A bargeboard or rake fascia is a board fastened to each projecting gable of a roof to give it strength and protection, and to conceal the otherwise exposed end grain of the horizontal timbers or purlins of the roof. The word ''bargeboard'' is pr ...
of strongly concave shape, a .
The entrance is covered by a 5 ken wide step canopy with an undulating ''
karahafu'' gable at eave ends
(''nokikarahafu'').
See also
*
List of National Treasures of Japan (shrines)
References
External links
Ōsaki Hachimangū official site
Ōsaki Hachimangū English pamphlet
Beppyo shrines
Shinto shrines in Sendai
Date clan
National Treasures of Japan
Hachiman shrines
Son-sha
Ishi-no-ma-zukuri
{{Hachiman Faith