is a

Shinto shrine A is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more ''kami'', the deities of the Shinto religion. Overview Structurally, a Shinto shrine typically comprises several buildings. The '' honden''Also called (本殿, meani ...

located in Nishi-ku,

Sakai is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It has been one of the largest and most important seaports of Japan since the medieval era. Sakai is known for its keyhole-shaped burial mounds, or kofun, which date from the fifth century and incl ...

Osaka Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It is the ''

ichinomiya is a Japanese historical term referring to the Shinto shrines with the highest rank in a province. Shrines of lower rank were designated , , , and so forth. ''Encyclopedia of Shinto'' ''Ichi no miya'' retrieved 2013-5-14. The term gave rise t ...

'' of former

Izumi Province :''The characters ''泉州'' are also used for the name of the Chinese city of Quanzhou''. was a province of Japan in the area of southern Osaka Prefecture. Tango bordered on Kii to the south, Yamato and Kawachi to the west, and Settsu to t ...

. The shrine's main festival is held annually on August 13.

Shine name and legend

The shrine has been called variously as or in the past. Although is the correct name, “Ōtori Taisha” has gained widespread popular acceptance. According to the shrine's legend, its foundation has strong connections with the

Yamato Takeru , originally , was a Japanese semi-legendary prince of the Yamato dynasty, son of Emperor Keikō, who is traditionally counted as the 12th Emperor of Japan. His name written in kanji can vary, in the '' Nihon Shoki'' it is spelled 日本武尊 a ...

mythology. According to the ''

Kojiki The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperia ...

'' and the '' Nihon Shoki'', as the folk hero Yamato Takeru was returning home after his conquests in eastern Japan, he feel ill after blasphemy against the deity of

Mount Ibuki is a mountain, on the border of Maibara, Shiga Prefecture, and Ibigawa, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains, and is also included on the lists of the 100 Kinki Mountains and the 50 Shiga Mountains. Mount Ibuk ...

and died in

Ise Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today includes most of modern Mie Prefecture. Ise bordered on Iga, Kii, Mino, Ōmi, Owari, Shima, and Yamato Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . History The name of Ise appears i ...

. However, after he was buried in a

burial mound Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

, a white heron emerged from the tomb and flew westward. It stopped at two places (and ''kofun'' were built at each location) before disappearing to the heavens. However, per the legend of this shrine, the white heron made one final stop at the , a forest in Izumi Province, where this shrine was later built.

Enshrined ''kami''

The ''

kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the sp ...

'' enshrined at Ōtori Jinja are: * , son of

Emperor Keikō , also known as and , was the 12th legendary Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Both the ''Kojiki'', and the ''Nihon Shoki'' (collectively known as the ''Kiki'') record events that took place during Keikō's all ...

and folk hero * , ancestor of the Fujiwara clan

History

There is little documentary evidence and it is uncertain when this shrine was first built. Architecturally, the buildings are constructed in the {{nihongo, ''Ōtori-zukuri'', 大鳥造, which is believed to be a very ancient style of Shinto architecture, second only to the style of

Izumo Taisha , officially Izumo Ōyashiro, is one of the most ancient and important Shinto shrines in Japan. No record gives the date of establishment. Located in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, it is home to two major festivals. It is dedicated to the god , fam ...

.http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm130/peacefulapricot/Otori%20Jinja%20and%20Sumiyoshi%20Taisha/P4200061.jpg The first mention of the shrine in documentation comes from an entry in the ''

Nihon Kōki is an officially commissioned Japanese history text. Completed in 840, it is the third volume in the Six National Histories. It covers the years 792–833. Background Following the earlier national history ''Shoku Nihongi'' (797), in 819 Empero ...

'' dated 823 AD, in which the Imperial Court requested that the shrine pray for rain. The name also appears in the ''

Shoku Nihon Kōki is an officially commissioned Japanese history text. Completed in 869, it is the fourth volume in the Six National Histories. It covers the years 833–850. Background Following the earlier national history ''Nihon Kōki'' (840), in 855 Emperor ...

'' and the ''

Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku , abbreviated as Sandai Jitsuroku, is an officially commissioned Japanese history text. Completed in 901, it is the sixth and final text in the Six National Histories series. It covers the years 858–887. Background Following the earlier nation ...

'', either in connection with prayer srelating to weather, or promotions in the shrine's official status. By the time of the 923 AD ''

Engishiki The is a Japanese book about laws and customs. The major part of the writing was completed in 927. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Engi-shiki''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia'', p. 178. History In 905, Emperor Daigo ordered the compilation of the ...

'', the shrine is styled as the only shrine in Izumi Province to be a {{nihongo, ''Myōjin-taisha'', 名神大社, and as an indication of its importance, an imperial messenger was dispatched to attend its annual ''

Niiname-no-Matsuri The Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, also read Shinjō-sai and Niiname-no-Matsuri) is a Japanese harvest festival, harvest ritual. The ritual is celebrated by the Emperor of Japan, who thanks the Shinto deities for a prosperous year and prays for a fruitfu ...

''. During this period, the shrine was under the control of {{nihongo, Shinpu-ji, 神鳳寺, }, a Buddhist temple said to have been founded by

Gyōki was a Japanese Buddhist priest of the Nara period, born in Ōtori county, Kawachi Province (now Sakai, Osaka), the son of Koshi no Saichi. According to one theory, one of his ancestors was of Korean descent. Gyōki became a monk at Asuka-dera, ...

in either 708 AD or 740 AD. The temple had close connections with the

Five regent houses The Five Regent Houses (五摂家; ''go-sekke'') is a collective term for the five families of the Fujiwara clan that monopolized the regent position of '' Sekkan'' in Japan from 1252 until 1868. The five houses are Konoe, Takatsukasa, Kujō, Ic ...

of the

Fujiwara clan was a powerful family of imperial regents in Japan, descending from the Nakatomi clan and, as legend held, through them their ancestral god Ame-no-Koyane. The Fujiwara prospered since the ancient times and dominated the imperial court until th ...

. During the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

, branches of the shrine were built at many locations around the country, mostly in connection with ''

shōen A was a field or manor in Japan. The Japanese term comes from the Tang dynasty Chinese term "莊園" (Mandarin: ''zhuāngyuán'', Cantonese: ''zong1 jyun4''). Shōen, from about the 8th to the late 15th century, describes any of the private, ...

'' estates controlled by the Fujiwara, and around this time the shrine came to be called the ''ichinomiya'' of Izumi Province. During the premodern period, the main ''

'' worshipped at the Ōtori-daimyōjin was

Amaterasu Amaterasu, also known as Amaterasu Ōmikami () or Ōhirume no Muchi no Kami (), is the goddess of the sun in Japanese mythology. One of the major deities (''kami'') of Shinto, she is also portrayed in Japan's earliest literary texts, the ''Kojik ...

, although the shrine's connection with the Yamato Takeru myth was well-known, and Yamato Takeru was enshrined as a secondary ''kami''. During the

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period. He is regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. Nobunaga was head of the very powerful Oda clan, and launched a war against other ''daimyō'' to unify ...

confiscated the shrine's estates, valued at 1300 ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. 1 koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about . It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1000 gō. One ''gō'' is the volume of the "rice cup", the plastic measuring cup that is supplied ...

'', in 1575. The shrine was burned down, but was one of a series of shrines and temples rebuilt in 1602 by order of

Toyotomi Hideyori was the son and designated successor of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the general who first united all of Japan. His mother, Yodo-dono, was the niece of Oda Nobunaga. Early life Born in 1593, he was Hideyoshi's second son. The birth of Hideyori cre ...

. The shrine was destroyed again during the 1615

Siege of Osaka The was a series of battles undertaken by the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate against the Toyotomi clan, and ending in that clan's destruction. Divided into two stages (winter campaign and summer campaign), and lasting from 1614 to 1615, the siege ...

. In 1662, Shinpu-ji and the Ōtori-daimyōjin were reconstructed by the '' Sakai bugyō'' per instructions by the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

and were repaired in 1701 by

Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu was a Japanese samurai of the Edo period. He was an official in the Tokugawa shogunate and a favourite of the fifth shōgun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. His second concubine was Ogimachi Machiko, a writer and scholar from the noble court who wrote ...

. Under the patronage of Yanagisawa, the temple became the head temple of the "Shingon Risshū Southern School" and had 76 daughter temples, mainly in the

Kansai region The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropolita ...

. The shrine's fortunes waxed and waned together with the temple, although with the growth of ''

kokugaku ''Kokugaku'' ( ja, 國學, label=Kyūjitai, ja, 国学, label=Shinjitai; literally "national study") was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period. Kokugaku scholars worked to refo ...

'' studies towards the

Bakumatsu period was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji govern ...

there were increasing calls for the shrine's rehabilitation. This goal was realized with the separation of Shinto and Buddhism following the

Meiji restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

, when Shingu-ji was destroyed and Ōtori Jinja reemerged as a purely Shinto shrine. In 1871, the shrine was designated a {{nihongo, Imperial Shrine, 1st rank, 官幣大社, ''Kanpei-taisha'' under the

Modern system of ranked Shinto shrines The was an organizational aspect of the establishment of Japanese State Shinto. This system classified Shinto shrines as either official government shrines or "other" shrines. The official shrines were divided into #Imperial shrines (''kampeisha ...

, and in 1876, after reevaluation, the resident ''kami'' was changed from Amaterasu to {{nihongo, Ōtori-no-muraji-no-oyagami, 大鳥連祖神, }, who was identified with

Ame-no-Koyane Ame-no-Koyane-no-mikoto ( 天児屋命, 天児屋根命) is a ''kami'' and a male deity in Japanese mythology and Shinto. He is the ancestral god of the Nakatomi clan, and Fujiwara no Kamatari, the founder of the powerful Fujiwara clan. An ''Amat ...

, the ancestor of the Fujiwara clan. This caused a backlash from the shrine; however, despite vehement ongoing protest, the ruling was upheld by the government in 1896. Ongoing efforts to make Yamato Takeru the resident ''kami'' were also ignored by the government, and it was not until 1961 that the shrine was able to install Yamato Takeru next to Ōtori-no-muraji. The main shrine building was destroyed by lightning on August 15, 1905, and the current ''

Honden In Shinto shrine architecture, the , also called , or sometimes as in Ise Shrine's case, is the most sacred building at a Shinto shrine, intended purely for the use of the enshrined ''kami'', usually symbolized by a mirror or sometimes by a sta ...

'' was rebuilt in December 1909. The shrine is five minutes on foot from Otori Station on the

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, and ...

Hanwa Line The is a commuter rail line in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto Metropolitan Area, owned and operated by West Japan Railway Company (JR West). The 61.3 km (38.1 mi) line runs between Osaka and Wakayama, Wakayama, Wakayama, Japan and has a 1.7 km branchlin ...

.{{cite book , last1=Okada , first1=Shoji , title=Taiyō no chizuchō 24 zenkoku `Ichinomiya' meguri , date=2014 , publisher=Heibonsha , isbn=4582945619 , language=Japanese

Gallery

Ootori-taisha 20040313 001.jpg, Torii Otori-taisha, shaden.jpg, Honden Yamato Takeru(bronze statue,Osaka)02.jpg, Statue of Yamato Takeru

Festival

The shrine holds a ''

Danjiri Matsuri Danjiri Matsuri are cart-pulling festivals held in Japan. The Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri is probably the most famous. There are other Danjiri Matsuri held in the City of Kobe and Haruki Town, but they are less popular and spectacular. The highlight ...

’' festival is held every year on the weekend of the first week of October. File:Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine002.jpg, At grounds of Ōtori taisha. File:Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine017.jpg, At grounds of Ōtori taisha. File:Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine016.jpg, A priest of Ōtori taisha prays for the safety of the festival. File:Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine001.jpg, Torii gate of the main entrance to Ōtori taisha File:Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 001.webm, Danjiri Matsuri

References

{{reflist

External links

{{commons category, Ōtori-taisha
Official websiteOsaka Official Travel Guide
{{Shinto shrine Shinto shrines in Osaka Prefecture Ichinomiya Izumi Province Sakai, Osaka