[Viator]

The small Buddhist temple.

Buddhist temples and shintō shrines are both the most recognizable and typical places of worship in Japan. The architecture of each denomination have its own characteristics and unique features, however sometimes they are surprisingly difficult to be distinguished from one another.

The first reason is the long tradition of merging the temples with shrines, i.e. many places of worship were dedicated to believers of both Buddhism and shintō. Although after the Meiji restoration this was forbidden by the authorities, the big Buddhist temple complexes up to now often contain typical shintō elements including the torii gates. In the same time multiple shintō shrines are decorated with Buddhist symbols like swastikas.

The second reason (most important in case of the smallest "forest temples" or shrines represented by the solitary building), is the general similarity of the architectural solution, derived after the rural granary. If you cannot enter and check the interior, sometimes they could be distinguished by the roof shape only (as the shintō shrines are often open-roofed and sometimes garnished with the additional protruding wooden rods - chigi and katsuogi) and by the additional or season decorations (like shimanawa cords) so sometimes the building itself (especially the abandoned building) is difficult to be classified.

In this particular example Sanda Sakamoto-san declared his model to be a dō (Buddhist prayer hall) himself so let it be.

As usual, I rescaled the "sheet N15" from Papermau webpage from 1/150 to 1/300 as well as I made few minor modifications to the original. The 2 mm dia sphere on the top of the roof (imitated by the two interpenetrating flat circles on the original) was replaced with a solid ball made of eight circles 1 to 2 mm in diameter cut, glued together and grinded. The original rectangular blocks representing the pillars and beams I replaced with the solid strips of thick paper glueing two of each together. The original stairs (made of two steps only) were replaced with a stair flight made of four steps, more adequate for this scale.