Sanjūsangendō (Hall of Thirty-three Bays), Rengeōin
三十三間堂
Artwork · Anonymous · 1266 · building · Sanjūsangen-dō Temple
A hall for one thousand images of the thousand-armed Kannon, the reproduction of the Rengeōin built by Taira no Kiyomori in 1164 for the retired emperor Emperor Go-Shirakawa. When that hall burnt down in 1249, rebuilding began at once; it was finished by 1253, the main image installed in 1254 and the final dedication held in 1266. An architectural oddity: a moya thirty-three bays long but only three deep, surrounded by a corridor — 118 metres long, so that from the Edo period archers competed along its veranda (the record, set in 1686, was 13,053 arrows, 8,133 of them reaching the end). Inside, heavy beams and arched rainbow beams, no ceiling. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 153–155, fig. 187. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.