This paper examines the function of Kotaijingu Gishikicho in reconstruction of buildings of Naiku (Inner Shrine of Ise-JIngu) in Keian (1648-52) and Kanbun era (1661-1673). In both cases, they adopted Gishikicho as the design norm, but most of the reconstructed building sizes were different from the instruction of it.
In the Kanbun project, the reliability of Gishikicho was questioned, and since then, Gishikicho was not seen as the absolutely faithful description of ancient buildings. The loss of authority of the text was hidden at first, but soon they insisted that they can distinguish the original parts of the text from later distortion with close study. Since then, many attempts to seek for the original forms of ancient buildings were made through compiling old texts and publishing commentary or plans.