The conception of architecture, understood since modernity, emphasizes permanence. The durability of tectonic construction can be manifested in various ways. However, what does it mean to associate architecture with ephemerality? And what happens when the idea of permanence is connected to transience? The Shikinen Sengu ceremony in Japan may help provide answers to these questions.
Within the realm of hegemonic architectural thought, the monument stands as the foremost example of permanence within a city. It represents something deserving of remembrance and is not the sole symbol embodying this intent for perpetuity. Government headquarters, courts, and temples present themselves as steadfast structures to bolster enduring, timeless values. They evoke abstract concepts, with architecture serving as the vessel or embodiment of these ideas. The Shikinen Sengu ceremony is intriguing due to the disassociation between the physical solidity of construction and the concepts that are associated with it.
The Japanese city of Ise is located in Mie province and houses the Jingu (temple), whose reconstruction has occurred periodically since 690, during Empress Jito's reign. The ceremony, commonly known as Sengu, consists of Jingu reconstruction every 20 years. Jingu is a complex of temples, including Naiku (inner temple) and Geku (outer temple). The former is dedicated to Amaterasu Omikami, the goddess of the sun. The latter honors Toyouke Omikami, the goddess of agriculture, shelter, and industry.
Both are erected in the Yuitsu Shinmei-zukuri style, which brings together some formal characteristics of the temples but is inspired by warehouses that stored rice harvests in ancient Japan. Jingu has a cypress wood structure, a raised floor, and a thatched roof. Since the temple is built of wood, exposure to the elements and contact of the pillars with the soil wears down the buildings over the years. This makes it necessary to build new buildings regularly. The reconstruction is accompanied by celebrations and events that involve the entire community of the region and are also a way of keeping traditions, construction methods, and carpentry techniques alive.
The 20 years between ceremonies are filled with reconstruction stages: from collecting and preparing lumber to manufacturing the temple parts. The preparation process for Jingu's lumber takes 8 years. The lumber is partially from a forest in Jingu itself - which has a reforestation land with a 200-year plan to achieve self-sufficiency in raw materials for Sengu - and partially from other cities. The logs are transported along the river, and the curing is done by submerging the pieces in water for two years and drying them for another year.
The preparation requires not only the "slow" time necessary for the material to be at its highest performance but also specialized labor in its manufacture and assembly. Thus, the techniques are passed down through generations of the involved community, keeping an ancestral construction technique alive, whose vitality would have been lost if not for the need for the construction of the new temple.
During the lumber preparation ceremony, river stones are collected, cleaned, and stacked to line the new Jingu's terrain. The transport of temple elements to the terrain is accompanied by processions, mobilizing Ise and neighboring cities, and configuring a ritual with music and interactions between the material carriers and the public. A conceptual inversion is announced in the general description of Sengu: memory and tradition become eternal through the ruin and demolition of the old temple and the construction of the new temple.
A vacant land bordering Naiku and Geku has been designed to receive new construction. After they are erected, the belongings of the old temples are transferred to the new ones, in a ritual that culminates in the transfer of Amaterasu's mirror, which consecrates the new Naiku. The old temple is dismantled, and the usable parts are used in the torii (entry porches of Jingu). They are transported to other temples in the complex or other prefectures for maintenance.
This constant work, in the view of those involved, is what makes Jingu endure over the centuries, making it eternal. This approach has two beautiful aspects. The first is that permanence is not linked to architecture as a singular work, but to architecture as an idea. What matters is not this or that specific building, but the temple model, Yuitsu Shinmei-zukuri. Architecture is how music, customs, and techniques survive.
The second is that the degradation of Jingu's materials evokes the cycle of life and death of everything alive (and inanimate too, why not?) on Earth. In addition to the reabsorption of materials after disassembly or demolition - since it is organic matter - conceptually, it is understood that everything in the world is transitory and will eventually cease to exist. The transitory is indeed transient, but it does not exclude the concept of cycles, which are eternal, after all, a constant repetition of the order of time. Jingu's degradation and reconstruction reflect the endless cycle of time, seasons of the year, days, life, and death.
Seeing ruins can confuse the observer. On the one hand, it transmits the ultimate melancholy of the transitory, of what has gone and will not return. On the other hand, ruins inspire admiration and are often considered aesthetically pleasing. Sengu takes on the grandeur of Western ruin without denying it. The old Jingu is not abandoned, it becomes part of other buildings, and in a way, it renews itself.
Aside from all the fascinating cultural minutiae of the Shikinen Sengu, what is intriguing is the idea of a “perishable” architecture, which gains value (and eternity) precisely because of this aspect. One of the recurring contemporary issues concerns returning to living and dying more comfortably and respectfully in current times. Indigenous wisdom teaches us about Earth's cycles, eternity and communion between humans and non-humans. The Shikinen Sengu joins the list of examples with much to teach us.
