Ōmiwa Shrine
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, also known as , is a Shinto shrine located in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture,
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
. The shrine is notable because it contains no sacred images or objects, since it is believed to serve Mount Miwa, the mountain on which it stands. For the same reason, it has a , but no . In this sense, it is a model of what the first Shinto shrines were like.Tamura, page 21 Ōmiwa Shrine is one of the oldest extant Shinto shrines in Japan and the site has been sacred ground for some of the earliest religious practices in Japan. Because of this, it has sometimes been named as Japan's first shrine. Ōmiwa Shrine is a tutelary shrine of the Japanese sake brewers.


History

Ōmiwa Shrine's history is closely related to Mount Miwa and the religious practices surrounding the mountain. In the early Kofun period, Yamato kings and leaders had shifted their attention to ''
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
'' worship on Mount Miwa, and Ōmiwa Shrine was the major institution for this branch of worship. The style of Shinto surrounding Miwa became later known as Miwa Shinto and is set apart from previous practices by a more structured theological philosophy. The shrine became the object of Imperial patronage during the early Heian period. In 965,
Emperor Murakami The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife ( empress consort), mother/grandmother ( empress dowager/ grand empress dowager), or a woman who rul ...
ordered that Imperial messengers be sent to report important events to the guardian ''kami'' of Japan. These ''heihaku'' were initially presented to 16 shrines, including Ōmiwa. Ōmiwa was designated as the chief Shinto shrine ('' ichinomiya'') for the former Yamato Province. From 1871 through 1946, Ōmiwa was officially designated one of the , meaning that it stood in the first rank among government supported shrines.


Religious significance

The Ōmiwa Shrine is directly linked to Mount Miwa in that the mountain is the shrine's '' shintai'', or "kami-body", instead of a building housing a "kami-body". This type of mountain worship ('' shintai-zan'') is found in the earliest forms of
Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...
and has also been employed at Suwa Shrine in Nagano, and formerly at Isonokami Shrine in
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and Munakata Shrine in Fukuoka. According to the chronicle '' Nihon Shoki'', Emperor Sujin appealed to Mount Miwa's ''
kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...
'' when Japan was crippled by plague. In response, the ''kami'' Ōmononushi demanded rituals be performed for him at Mount Miwa. He then demanded that the rites be led by , his half-kami, half-human son born from the union with a woman of the Miwa clan. performed the rites to satisfaction, and the plague subsided. A building dedicated to was later erected in his honor. A legendary white snake is said to live in around the shrine and is supposedly one of the kami worshiped there. Indeed, snakes and the snake cult figures importantly in the myths surrounding Mount Miwa as well as early Shinto in general.


Auxiliary shrines

The Ōmiwa shrine complex includes notable auxiliary shrines ('' setsumatsusha''), including 12 and 28 which are marked by small structures falling under Ōmiwa's jurisdiction. For example, the ''sessha'' ''Ikuhi jinja'' enshrines the ''kami'' who was appointed Ōmiwa's sake brewer in the 4th month of the 8th year of the reign of Emperor Sujin. A poem associated with Ikuhi is said to have been composed by Empress Jingū on the occasion of a banquet for her son, Emperor Ōjin: ::This is sacred sake :::is not my sacred sake. ::This sacred sake brewed by Ōmononushi ::How long ago ::How long ago.


Hibara Shrine

Hibara Shrine is a subshrine of Omiwa Shrine at the foot of Mount Miwa in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture. The shrine is identified as the place where the Yata-no-Kagami and the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi were first enshrined after they were removed from the imperial palace. It is the first of many shrines. Amaterasu was originally enshrined there before eventually moving to other Moto-Ise shrines and then finally to Ise Jingu. It has an Iwakura rock and a Shinza made of Sakaki wood. It has a prominent unique closable triple torii gate.


Architecture

Ōmiwa Shrine is situated in a quiet forest and built directly in front of Mount Miwa. An ancient Japanese cedar tree (''Cryptomeria'') can be found on shrine compound and is considered sacred. The shrine has Mount Miwa as its Shintai, as a Kannabi and does not have a honden. Decorations in the form of Borromean rings are found throughout the shrine's buildings. This ornamentation symbolizes the three rings, as "Miwa" is written with the
kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...
for and . Built in 1984, at 32 m the ''torii'' on its sandō is the second highest in Japan. The shrine also has a great ''shime torii'', an ancient form of gate made only with two posts and a rope called '' shimenawa''. It is one of few shrines that has a "triple-''torii''" ('' miwa torii'') on its grounds. This gate is also one of the few to actually have doors, which bar access to the mountain it enshrines. The buildings at Ōmiwa Shrine are a mix of structures built from ancient times to the
Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...
.


National treasures


Important Cultural Assets

*The entire shrine compound *The 17th century ''haiden'', or prayer hall, built with cypress bark roofing *The "Triple-''torii''" (''miwa torii'')Ponsonby-Fane, '' Visiting Famous Shrines in Japan,'' p. 271; note that "threefold torii take the place of the ''shinden'' of other shrines" *The ''shinden'' dedicated to Ōtata Neko *Suit of bronze armor, lacquered red *A copy of the '' Book of Zhou'', scroll number 19


See also

* Asteroid 24640 Omiwa * Koshintō * List of Shinto shrines * Miwa clan * Modern system of ranked Shinto Shrines * Mount Miwa * Twenty-Two Shrines


Notes


References

* Aston, William George. (2005). ''Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697''. Boston: Tuttle Publishing. . * Breen, John and Mark Teeuwen. (2000)
''Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami.''
Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...
. * Brown, Delmer M. (1993). ''Cambridge History of Japan'', Volume 1. New York:
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
. . * Kidder, Jonathan Edward (2007). ''Himiko and Japan's elusive chiefdom of Yamatai: archaeology, history, and mythology''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. . * Ponsonby-Fane, Richard. (1962).
''Studies in Shinto and Shrines.''
Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society
OCLC 399449
* ____________. (1959)
''The Imperial House of Japan.''
Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society
OCLC 194887
* ____________. (1964)
''Visiting Famous Shrines in Japan.''
Kyoto: Ponsonby-Fane Memorial Society. *


External links


Official Site
(Japanese)

(English) {{DEFAULTSORT:Omiwa Shrine Shinto shrines in Nara Prefecture Important Cultural Properties of Japan Historic Sites of Japan Beppyo shrines Kanpei Taisha Myōjin Taisha Twenty-Two Shrines Moto-Ise shrines Miwa shrines Mount Miwa