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 the Ichinomiya-shinane neighborhood in the northeastern part of the city of Kōchi,

Kochi Prefecture Kochi (), also known as Cochin ( ) (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Kerala, the official name until 1996) is a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea, which is a part of the Arabian Sea. It is part ...

, on the island of Shikoku,

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

Tosa Province was a province of Japan in the area of southern Shikoku. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tosa''" in . Tosa bordered on Awa to the northeast, and Iyo to the northwest. Its abbreviated form name was . In terms of the Gokishichidō syste ...

. The shrine's main festival is held annually from March 11-13.Several of the shrine structures are designated National Important Cultural Properties. The shrine's Shinane Festival, held on August 25, is known as one of the three major festivals of Tosa.

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 Tosa Jinja are: * , the son of Ōkuninushi and ancestor of the Kano clan, the '' kuni no miyatsuko'' of Tosa Province; also called Kano Omikami * , who appears in 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 '' Nihon Shoki'' in the section of

Emperor Yuryaku An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother (empr ...

as an oracle god from Mount Yamato Katsuragi

History

It is not known when the Tosa Shrine was founded. Per the shrine's legend (as recounted in the late

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 ...

Shaku Nihongi is an annotated text of the '' Nihon Shoki'' compiled by Urabe Kanekata between 1274 and 1301 that is 28 volumes in length.Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten Henshū Iinkai (1986:894) Contents The 28 volumes are divided into seven sections: *volume 1 ...

'') when

was hunting near

Mount Yamato Katsuragi or simply Mount Katsuragi is a mountain in the Kongō Range straddling the prefectural border between Chihayaakasaka, Osaka and Gose, Nara in Japan. The peak elevation is . The mountain is located along the Gose Line of the Kintetsu Railway. The ...

Yamato Province was a province of Japan, located in Kinai, corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture in Honshū. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric (2005). "Yamato" in . It was also called . Yamato consists of two characters, 大 "great", and 和 " Wa". At first, the ...

, he encountered Hitokoto-no-nushi no kami, but due to his irreverent behavior the Emperor had him exiled to

. The exiled deity was first enshrined at a place called 'Kamonochi' where the locals worshipped a god called "Kano Omikami" and was later transferred to the present location. There are various candidates vying for the location of this first shrine, including the Kano Jinja in the town of

Kuroshio The , also known as the Black or or the is a north-flowing, warm ocean current on the west side of the North Pacific Ocean basin. It was named for the deep blue appearance of its waters. Similar to the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, the Ku ...

, Kano Jinja in Susaki and Narunashi Jinja in Susaki. The exact location of the Tosa

Kokufu are the capitals of the historical Provinces of Japan. History As part of the Taika Reform (645) which aimed at a centralization of the administration following the Chinese model (''ritsuryō''), the kokufu and with it the office of the kokush ...

is also uncertain; however, the area around the shrine has many late

Kofun period The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...

(6th century to 7th century) burial mounds and per the "Tosa no Kuni Fudoki", there was a government administrative complex located some two kilometers east of the Tosa Shrine. The first historical record of Tosa Shrine is found in " Nihon Shoki" in an entry dated to the 4th year of

Emperor Tenmu was the 40th emperor of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 天武天皇 (40) retrieved 2013-8-22. according to the traditional order of succession. Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1959). ''The Imperial House of Japan'', p. 53. Tenmu's re ...

(675), which details the submission of the local Tsuchisa no Ōkami Hosai clan to the Imperial Court. In addition, an entry of August in 686 mentions the dispatch of offerings from the Imperial Court to Tsuchiza no Ōkami following the Hakuho Earthquake of 684, and response to Emperor Tenmu's deteriorating physical condition from June 686. In the "Shinsho Kakuchokufusho" of 765, 20 of the 53 shrines added to 'Takakamo no kami' were found in Tosa Province, suggesting a relationship with the

Kamo clan is a Japanese sacerdotal kin group which traces its roots from a Yayoi period shrine in the vicinity of northeastern Kyoto. The clan rose to prominence during the Asuka and Heian periods when the Kamo are identified with the 7th-century found ...

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

. The Tosa Shrine was promoted to the highest rank in 940 AD due to successful prayers for the suppression of the Fujiwara no Sumitomo rebellion. In the '' Engishiki'' records, the shrine was named as a ''Myōjin-taisha'', the only such shrine in Tosa Province. Per the "Hyakurensho" records of 1224, the shrine was completely destroyed by a

typhoon A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for a ...

. The shrine is first named as the ''ichinomiya'' of they province in 1326 in an account of a battle between forces of the

Northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

and

Southern Court The were a set of four emperors (Emperor Go-Daigo and his line) whose claims to sovereignty during the Nanboku-chō period spanning from 1336 through 1392 were usurped by the Northern Court. This period ended with the Southern Court definitively ...

s which occurred in the vicinity. It is believed that a ''

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, ...

'' manor called Ichinomiya-shō was formed around the shrine during the

, and that the priests of the shrine became secularized samurai in the Muromachi period under the name of the "Ichinomiya clan". The shrine was destroyed again around 1509 in the wars of the early

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 ...

,and was reconstructed by

Chōsokabe Motochika was a prominent ''daimyō'' in Japanese Sengoku-period. He was the 21st chief of the Chōsokabe clan of Tosa Province (present-day Kōchi Prefecture), the ruler of Shikoku region. Early life and rise He was the son and heir of Chōsokabe Kuni ...

, with 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 ...

, Heiden and

Haiden Haiden may refer to: *A Gewürztraminer wine * Haiden (Shinto), the hall of worship of a Shinto shrine See also * Heiden (disambiguation) {{disambig ...

of the shrine completed in 1571. Various vassals of the Chōsokabe were assigned to reconstruct lesser structures and several villages in the vicinity of the shrine were assigned to the shrine for its upkeep. During the

Edo Period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, the

Yamauchi clan The Yamauchi clan (山内氏) were a family of rulers over what was then the Tosa Province which spanned the southern half of Shikoku island. The province was given to the family in 1600 after Yamauchi Kazutoyo led troops under Tokugawa Ieyasu a ...

who ruled as

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

Tosa Domain The was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, controlling all of Tosa Province in what is now Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It was centered around Kōchi Castle, and was ruled throughout its history by t ...

, further constructed to the shrine, with the second ''daimyō'', Yamauchi Tadayoshi, contributing the ''

Rōmon The is one of two types of two-storied gate used in Japan (the other one being the ''nijūmon'', see photo in the gallery below). Even though it was originally developed by Buddhist architecture, it is now used at both Buddhist temples and Shin ...

'' tower gate in 1631 and a drum tower in 1649. Following the Meiji restoration, the shrine was renamed Tosa Jinja in 1871 and it was designated a 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 ...

. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, it was redesignated a Beppyo Shrine under the Jinja Honchō. In 2003, an

archaeological excavation In archaeology, excavation is the exposure, processing and recording of archaeological remains. An excavation site or "dig" is the area being studied. These locations range from one to several areas at a time during a project and can be condu ...

on the west side of the precincts found the foundations of the medieval mansion and other structures related to temples and shrines.

Cultural Properties

National Important Cultural Properties

*, built by Chōsokabe Motochika, and completed in 1571. It is a five by four bay structure with a gabled and thatched roof. The exterior is painted in rich colors and carved everywhere, and the interior is divided into inner and outer sanctuaries. * and , also built by Chōsokabe Motochika, and completed in 1571. The buildings are arranged so as to represent the shape of a dragonfly flying into the main shrine, and this layout unique to Tosa Shrine. It is said to symbolize a triumphant return from battle. *,located southeast of the Heiden. It was built in 1649 in the early Edo period by Yamauchi Tadayoshi. It is a two-story structure with a gabled and thatched roof. The upper floor has carvings and pillars painted with colors, and a drum is hung inside to tell the time. *, also known as the 'Shinkomon,' it was built by Yamauchi Tadayoshi in 1631 in the early Edo period. It is a two-storied gate with three girder rows and two spans between beams (a two-storied gate with no eaves between the first and upper floors), and the roof is gabled and covered with copper. The first floor enshrines they Zuijin between the left and right sides. The upper floor is surrounded by balustrades. The whole building is made of bare wood with almost no decoration. Tosa-jinja honden.JPG, Honden Tosa-jinja haiden-4.jpg, Haiden Tosa-jinja10s3872.jpg, Heiden Tosa-jinja korou-3.jpg, Drum Tower Tosazinzya01.jpg, Romon

Notes

References

* Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1964)
''Visiting Famous Shrines in Japan.''
Kyoto: Ponsonby-Fane Memorial Society.

External links

Official home page
{{Authority control Beppyo shrines Shinto shrines in Kōchi Prefecture Ichinomiya Important Cultural Properties of Japan Kōchi