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.

History

Tradition places the shrine's founding in 587, though the present shaden dates only to 1705, its honden, heiden and haiden joined in a cross-shaped plan under a copper roof that Hidaka villagers liken to a dragonfly in flight. Its shintai, the object in which the kami is felt to dwell, is a gilt bronze tachi sword with a ring pommel, offered to the god Kunitokotachi by the Kusakabe clan at the time of the shrine's founding and dated by scholars to the late Kofun period, making it, by tradition, the oldest Japanese object handed down without interruption from generation to generation.

Significance

Ranked for centuries as Tosa Province's second shrine after Tosa Jinja itself, Omura Shrine keeps a National Treasure sword that leaves its case only once each year, at the fifteenth of November grand festival, when it is shown to the public before the community. Behind the main hall stands the Botansugi, a Japanese cedar reckoned a thousand years old and said in legend to glow at times of crisis, a reminder of the older Shinto reverence for sacred trees as dwellings of the unseen.

Architecture

Edo-period Shinto shrine architecture; the 1705 honden, heiden and haiden form a single cross-shaped ('dragonfly') plan under a nagare-zukuri copper roof