wood interlocking technique
A traditional Japanese joinery method where wooden pieces are intricately interlocked without nails, often used in temple and shrine construction. The term literally means 'hell assembly', reflecting the extreme difficulty of the technique.
The pillars of this temple are firmly assembled using the jigoku-gumi interlocking technique.
Jigoku-gumi is an advanced woodworking technique that uses no nails.
Standard kanji spelling for this architectural term.
Variant spelling with okurigana; less common but seen in some texts.
The term combines 地獄 (hell) and 組 (assembly), likely referring to the extreme difficulty of the technique, which is so complex it is likened to a hellish task.