Abstract
In historical ages of Japan, there were many tombs and mausoleums which were called "Tamaya", "Bodo", "Mieido", "Hokkedo" etc. These were mostly wooden buildings and contained corpses, ashes, portraits or pagoda-shaped monuments of the dead. There are some existing examples of them today and many of them have square plans and pavilion-roofs. Among 65 pavilion-roofed buildings which were designated as the cultural properties of Japan, 21 are tombs and mausoleums. Existing imperial mausoleums in wood have mostly pavilion-roofs too. Many tombs and mausoleums described in historical documents or picture-scrolls have pavilion-roofs also, for example: the mausoleum of Saicho on Mt. Hiei, the mausoleum and the portrait shrine or Kukai on Mt. Koya. And some of these descriptions teach us that such a building was worshipped by the people at the forecourt or at the front verandah of it. "Hokkedo" or "Sammaido", on the other hand, was originally a kind of ritual hall for Samadhi-priests, being attached to a Buddhist temple or a graveyard. But it became gradually a building for containig the corpse, ashes or the portrait of the dead. Documents offer us many examples of such buildings in 11th-13th centuries, including imperial mausoleums, and tell us that they had pavilion-roofs and worshipped from outside. The leading formal characteristic of pavilion-roof is "symmetry" both in plan and in elevation. And its symmetry is stronger than that of any other type of Japanese roof, i.e. hip-roof, Irimoya-roofs (upper part gable-, lower part hip-roof) or gable-roof. A symmetrical structure, generally speaking, asserts existence of itself and maintains its own space isolating from the outer world. The reason why Japanese tombs and mausoleums had pavilion-roofs should, therefore, come from its strong symmetry, as the case of pagodas or octagons in Japan and pyramids, stupas or other central-form buildings in Western countries which were erected for the same purpose. By the way, there were some varieties of pavilion-roofed tombs in recent centuries, e.g. that with a "Kohai" (entrance porch), with a "Karahafu" (decorative curvilinear gable) or with a longitudinal Irimoya-roof. But these varieties were only specific representation of general formative tendency in architecture of the period.
