Iwa Shrine

About

Iwa Shrine stands quietly amid the wooded hills of inland Hyogo, an ancient Shinto sanctuary at the heart of what was once the province of Harima. The kami enshrined here are Okuninushi, the great builder of the country, together with his companion Sukunabikona and Shitateru-hime no kami.

The origins of the shrine reach into the mythic past. The Harima Fudoki traces the shrine's name to a syllable uttered by Okuninushi at the moment he completed the building of the land, and dates the foundation to the reigns of the emperors Seimu or Kinmei. By the early Heian period the shrine was listed in the Engishiki, and by the late Heian it had been recognised as the Ichinomiya of Harima.

Iwa Shrine observes two great cyclic rites with no parallel in most other Shinto sanctuaries. The Single Mountain Rite is held every twenty years and honours Mount Miya, said to be the resting place of Onamuchi-no-Mikoto. A new shrine is raised on the mountain top, a white banner unfurled, and worship is offered from afar towards three sacred peaks while a sacred palanquin is carried down to the river valley.

The Three Mountains Rite is held every sixty years, and an inverse cycle is observed at Itatehyozu Shrine in Himeji, a connection said to date from when the Iwa deity was transferred there through kanjo.

History

The shrine has been rebuilt many times after destruction by fire, with successive support from the imperial court, the Akamatsu clan, and various feudal lords of the region. The Hitotsuyama Kofun, a burial mound of the Kofun period, lies about four hundred metres to the southeast and is designated a Prefectural Historic Site of Hyogo, situating the shrine within an ancient sacred landscape. After the Meiji Restoration, Iwa Shrine was raised in 1871 to the rank of Kokuhei Chusha, a National Shrine of the Second Rank, in the modern hierarchy of Shinto.