Buttō

The tō (塔 lit. pagoda^?), sometimes also called buttō (仏塔 lit. Buddhist pagoda^?) or tōba (塔婆 lit. pagoda^?) is the Japanese version of the Chinese pagoda, itself an interpretation of the Indian stupa.^[1]

Pagodas are quintessentially Buddhist and an important component of Japanese Buddhist temple compounds but, because until the Kami and Buddhas Separation Act of 1868 a Shinto shrine was normally also a Buddhist temple and vice versa, they are not rare at shrines too. The famous Itsukushima Shrine for example has one.^[2]

After the Meiji Restoration the word tō, once used exclusively in a religious context, came to mean also "tower" in the western sense, as for example in Eiffel tower (エッフェル塔 Efferu-tō^?).

Of the Japanese pagoda's many forms, some are built in wood and are collectively known as mokutō (木塔 lit. wood pagoda^?), but most are carved out of stone (sekitō (石塔 lit. stone pagoda^?).

Wood pagodas are large buildings with either two stories (like the tahōtō (多宝塔 lit. Tahō pagoda^?), or an odd number of stories. Extant wood pagodas with more than two storeys have almost always either three storeys (and are therefore called sanjū-no-tō (三重塔 lit. three-storeyed pagoda^?)) or five (and are called gojū-no-tō (五重塔 lit. five-storeyed pagoda^?). Stone pagodas are nearly always small, usually well below 3 m metres, and as a rule offer no usable space.

If they have more than one storey, pagodas are called tasōtō (多層塔 lit. multi-storied pagoda^?) or tajūtō (多重塔 lit. multi-storied pagoda^?).

A pagoda's size is measured in ken, where a ken is the interval between two pillars of a traditional-style building. A tahōtō for example can be either 5x5 ken or 3x3 ken.^[3] The word is usually translated in English as "bay" and is better understood as an indication of proportions than as a unit of measurement.