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- The Shinto shrine located in a bamboo grove on the estate of the Hayashi family, Japan, in 1983. Roof shows damage caused by a typhoon.
property. In 1924, it was moved to a foundation halfway up a mountain on their estate. The roof was repaired and the spirit of their ancestors was introduced into the shrine.
A bamboo grove was allowed to grow up around the shrine, and it was to a large extent forgotten.Until 1973, it was one of the few Meiji period shrines surviving in private hands. However, the family fortune of the Hayashi declined to such an extent that they had to sell the shrine. It was bought and sold several times in the intervening years and was even gambled away in a mahjong game. Eventually, a Japanese antique dealer acquired it and sold it to a Seattle antique dealer, Jeffery Cline, who subsequently sold it to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
This village shrine, now part of the Asian art collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, represents a very fine example of Meiji era shrine carpentry. It is the work of a miyadaiku or shrine carpenter, who laboured for more than a year to complete it. The building has a copper-shingled gable roof on a wooden structure, which rests on a hand-hewn kamachi sandstone base. The elegant building fits together in a complex joinery of interlocking beams and posts. Made of keiyaki, a dense hardwood, the shrine is highly resistant to rot and insect damage. The powerfully carved, lavish decorations show remarkable skill and are crucial to the shrine�s impressive appearance.
The shrine combines several styles of Shinto architecture. For example, its elevation on stilts and its entrance on the gable-end shows origins of early Shinto architecture, namely the Izumo Shrine. This architectural style is known as the Taisha- or Oyashiro-style. The Taisha style has a square plan for the main part of the building (honden) surrounded by a small, railed balcony and a
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