Omura Shrine

About

Omura Jinja stands quietly in the village of Hidaka in the Takaoka District of Kochi Prefecture on Shikoku. The shrine traces its founding to 587, though the present shaden, the main building, dates to 1705. Behind the main hall rises the Botansugi, a Japanese cedar designated a natural monument and held to be a thousand years old, whose canopy is said in legend to shine in times of crisis, earning the further name Tomyo-sugi or eternal flame cedar.

The shintai, the object in which the kami is felt to dwell, is a sword: the National Treasure kondoso kanto tachi goshirae, a gilt bronze tachi with a ring pommel offered to Kunitokotachi by the Kusakabe clan at the time of the shrine's founding. The straight, double-edged blade dates to the late Kofun period and is said to be the oldest Japanese object passed down from generation to generation. It is brought out for public veneration once a year, at the grand festival on 15 November.

Among its other treasures the shrine preserves two late Heian wooden masks of Bodhisattvas designated as Important Cultural Properties, two mirrors with a Horai design honoured as prefectural cultural properties, a piece of Sue ware, two bronze hoko, a vertical painting attributed to Ono no Michikaze, and a munafuda ridge tag from 1240. Nine painted hengaku votive plaques of the Thirty-Six Poets and a tanzaku with waka by Emperor Go-Nara are also kept here.

Significance

As the keeper of one of the oldest surviving Japanese ritual swords, Omura Jinja occupies a particular place in the long lineage of Shinto shrines that hold weapons as shintai, the seat of the kami. The Botansugi cedar behind the sanctuary continues the older Shinto reverence for sacred trees as dwelling places of unseen presence.