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

Tradition recorded in the eighth-century Harima Fudoki traces the shrine's founding to the reign of Emperor Seimu or Emperor Kinmei, and holds that its name comes from a word Okuninushi spoke upon completing the building of the land. The shrine appears in the tenth-century Engishiki registry of official shrines and was recognised by the end of the Heian period as the Ichinomiya of Harima Province. Fire has destroyed its halls more than once across the centuries, and each time the shrine was rebuilt with the support of the imperial court, the Akamatsu clan, and the feudal lords of the region; in 1871, after the Meiji Restoration, it was ranked a Kokuhei Chusha, a National Shrine of the Second Rank.

Significance

As Harima's Ichinomiya, Iwa Shrine has stood for centuries as the province's foremost shrine, drawing worshippers who seek Okuninushi's blessings on agriculture, matchmaking, and healing. Its grounds hold the Hitotsuyama Kofun, a burial mound of the Kofun period some four hundred metres to the southeast, setting the shrine within a landscape sacred long before the shrine itself was built. Once every twenty years the shrine's Single Mountain Rite and, once every sixty years, its Three Mountains Rite carry worship out to the peaks that ring the valley, rites shared in mirror form with Itatehyozu Shrine in nearby Himeji.

Architecture

Traditional Shinto shrine architecture set within old-growth cedar forest; the halls have been rebuilt repeatedly after fire