Suwa Shrine

About

Suwa Jinja rises upon a wooded hill above the harbour city of Nagasaki on the island of Kyushu and is venerated as the principal Shinto shrine of the city. Its precincts are reached by a long flight of stone steps ascending through successive torii gates, opening upon halls dedicated to Suwa Daimyōjin, drawn from the great Suwa shrine network headed by Suwa-taisha in Nagano Prefecture.

The shrine was founded in the early seventeenth century to anchor Shinto identity in a city deeply marked by Portuguese Catholic missionary work in the preceding decades. As Japan entered the policy of seclusion under the Tokugawa shogunate, the shrine became a centre of religious renewal and civic gathering for the residents of Nagasaki, including the merchant community trading at Dejima.

Nagasaki Suwa Jinja is best known for the autumn Nagasaki Kunchi festival, observed from the seventh to the ninth of October. The festival features a remarkable parade of dances brought to the shrine by the city's neighbourhood guilds in turn, incorporating Chinese dragon dances, Dutch-themed shipboard pageants and traditional Japanese forms.

Throughout the rest of the year the shrine sustains the rhythms of daily Shinto observance, gathering visitors at the New Year, for life-cycle blessings and for the seasonal rites that link the urban community to the kami and to the wider Suwa network.

History

Suwa Shrine traces its founding to 1614, when a small marker was first raised on the mountainside to gather Nagasaki's scattered Shinto faithful at a time when Portuguese Catholic missionary activity had deeply reshaped the city's religious life. The priest Aoki Kenmotsu petitioned Nagasaki's magistrate to establish the shrine properly, and under his care as its first chief priest from 1632 the shrine grew, moving to its present site on Mount Tamazono in 1648. Fire later destroyed the shrine buildings, and the present halls were rebuilt in 1869 by imperial order. Suwa Shrine survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 largely intact.

Significance

Suwa Shrine unites three lines of kami under one roof: Takeminakata-no-kami with Yasakatome-no-kami of the Suwa lineage, drawn from the great Suwa Taisha network of Nagano Prefecture, the creator deities Izanagi-no-kami and Izanami-no-kami of its Morisaki lineage, and the three Sumiyoshi deities who watch over sailors and safe harbour, fitting devotion for a city built on maritime trade. Its autumn festival, Nagasaki Kunchi, held from 7 to 9 October, is designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan and remains the clearest living expression of Nagasaki's centuries as Japan's one window onto the Chinese and Dutch worlds.

Architecture

Traditional Japanese Shinto shrine architecture approached by a stone stairway through a series of stone torii gates; the present halls date to an 1869 imperial-order reconstruction