Sumiyoshi Shrine

About

The Sumiyoshi Jinja of Hakata stands in the city of Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu and is honoured as one of the three foundational Sumiyoshi shrines of Japan, alongside the Sumiyoshi-taisha of Osaka and the Sumiyoshi Shrine of Shimonoseki. Sanctuaries bearing the Sumiyoshi name belong to a wide shrine network extending from Hokkaidō to the southern islands.

The kami enshrined are the three Sumiyoshi sanjin, the divinities Sokotsutsu no Onomikoto, Nakatsutsu no Onomikoto and Uwatsutsu no Onomikoto, born from the purification rites of Izanagi-no-Mikoto upon his return from Yomi. Together with Empress Jingū they are venerated as guardians of seafarers, fishermen and the safe passage of voyages.

The Hakata sanctuary's connection to the sea is woven into its setting, for the shrine has stood since antiquity near the great port through which Japan exchanged envoys, goods and learning with the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland.

The shrine continues to celebrate its principal annual festivals, including the autumn matsuri with its sumo wrestling rituals, the New Year hatsumōde drawing thousands of pilgrims, and the various rites of marine purification. The honden is a fine example of the distinctive Sumiyoshi-zukuri style of Shinto architecture, with its straight-roofed sanctuary derived from ancient cult halls.

History

The shrine's own record traces its worship into antiquity, and it is first named in the Shoku Nihongi in 737 CE, when offerings were made here to Chikushi Sumiyoshi during a season of tension with the Korean kingdom of Silla. Sanctuaries carrying the Sumiyoshi name spread from here across the country, and this Hakata shrine is counted with Sumiyoshi-taisha in Osaka and the Sumiyoshi shrine of Shimonoseki as one of Japan's three great Sumiyoshi sanctuaries, its own tradition holding it to be the eldest of the three. The present honden was raised in 1623 by the daimyo Kuroda Nagamasa, built in the archaic Sumiyoshi-zukuri style, a straight gabled roofline without the curve later styles adopted, its timbers painted vermilion beneath white walls. The Japanese state recognised the honden as a National Important Cultural Property in 1922, and ranked the shrine itself Kanpei-shosha, third grade of the Imperial shrines, in 1925.

Significance

The Sumiyoshi kami here are venerated above all as guardians of seafarers and of safe passage, a devotion rooted in this shrine's place beside the old port through which Hakata exchanged envoys, goods and learning with the Korean peninsula and mainland China across many centuries. Its Sumiyoshi-zukuri honden, among the oldest forms of shrine architecture still standing, lets worshippers today pray before a building whose plan predates the curved-roof styles that came to define most later shrines.

Architecture

Sumiyoshi-zukuri, among the oldest styles of Shinto shrine architecture: a straight-gabled honden without a curved roof, vermilion-painted pillars and white walls; honden built 1623, designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1922