is a

Shinto shrine A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion. The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...

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 '' kofun'', keyhole-shaped burial mounds dating from the fifth century. The ''kofun ...

Osaka Prefecture is a 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 to the north, Nara ...

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 ...

. It is the ''

ichinomiya is a Japanese language, Japanese historical term referring to the Shinto shrines with the highest rank in a Provinces of Japan, province. Shrines of lower rank were designated , , , and so forth.''Encyclopedia of Shinto'' ''Ichi no miya'' retr ...

'' of former

Izumi Province :''The characters ''泉州'' are also used for the name of the Chinese city of Quanzhou''. was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the area of southern Osaka Prefecture. It bordered on Kii Province, Kii to the south, Yamato Province, Ya ...

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

Shrine 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 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 The or , sometimes translated as ''The Chronicles of Japan'', is the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the , the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeol ...

'', 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, Maibara, Shiga Prefecture, and Ibigawa, Gifu, 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 ...

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 ...

. 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 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 ...

'' enshrined at Ōtori Jinja are: * , son of Emperor Keikō 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 which is believed to be a very ancient style of

Shinto architecture Some examples of Shinto architecture Shinto architecture is the architecture of Japanese Shinto shrines. With a few exceptions like Ise Grand Shrine and Izumo Taisha, Shinto shrines before Buddhism were mostly temporary structures erected t ...

, second only to the style of Izumo Taisha. 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 Em ...

'' dated 823 AD, in which the Imperial Court requested that the shrine pray for rain. The name also appears in the '' Shoku Nihon Kōki'' and the '' Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku'', 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 of 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 Emperor Daigo ordered the compilation of the ''Engishi ...

'', the shrine is styled as the only shrine in Izumi Province to be a 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 ritual. The ritual is celebrated by the Emperor of Japan, who thanks the Shinto deities for a prosperous year and prays for a fruitful new year. ...

''. During this period, the shrine was under the control of , 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-d ...

in either 708 AD or 740 AD. The temple had close connections with the Five regent houses of the

Fujiwara clan The 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 ancient times and dominated the imperial court until th ...

. During the

Kamakura period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

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

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

'' 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 , often called Amaterasu () for short, also known as and , is the goddess of the sun in Japanese mythology. Often considered the chief deity (''kami'') of the Shinto pantheon, she is also portrayed in Japan's earliest literary texts, the () ...

, 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 the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

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

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'', 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 united all of Japan toward the end of the Sengoku period. His mother, Yodo-dono, was the niece of Oda Nobunaga. Early life Born in 1593, he was Hideyoshi's sec ...

. The shrine was destroyed again during the 1615

Siege of Osaka A siege () . is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or by well-prepared assault. Siege warfare (also called siegecrafts or poliorcetics) is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict charact ...

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

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

and were repaired in 1701 by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. 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 metropol ...

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

kokugaku was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Edo period. scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese, Confucian, and Buddhist texts in favor of ...

'' studies towards the Bakumatsu period 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 Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

, when Shingu-ji was destroyed and Ōtori Jinja reemerged as a purely Shinto shrine. In 1871, the shrine was designated an under the

Modern system of ranked Shinto shrines Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philos ...

, and in 1876, after reevaluation, the resident ''kami'' was changed from Amaterasu to , who was identified with Ame-no-Koyane, 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, ...

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, Japan and has a 1.7 km branchline ...

Gallery

File:Ōtori-taisha, A Torii Gate at the Entrance to a Shrine 001.jpg, A torii gate at the entrance of a shrine File:Ōtori-taisha, Principal Shrine 001.jpg, Honden File:Ōtori-taisha, Statue of Yamato Takeru 001.jpg, Statue of Yamato Takeru

Festival

The shrine holds a '' Danjiri Matsuri’' festival is held every year on the weekend of the first week of October. File:2019 Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine002.jpg, At grounds of Ōtori taisha. File:2019 Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine017.jpg, At grounds of Ōtori taisha. File:2019 Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine016.jpg, A priest of Ōtori taisha prays for the safety of the festival. File:2019 Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine001.jpg, Torii gate of the main entrance to Ōtori taisha File:2019 Danjiri festival at Otori Shrine003.jpg File:Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 2022 003.webm File:2022 Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 009.webm File:2022 Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 007.webm File:2022 Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 005.webm File:2022 Danjiri Festival at Otori Shrine in Sakai, Osaka 006.webm

References

External links

Official websiteOsaka Official Travel Guide
{{Shinto shrine Beppyo shrines Kanpei Taisha Shinto shrines in Osaka Prefecture Ichinomiya Izumi Province Sakai, Osaka Myōjin Taisha Taisha Yamato Takeru Legend