Akumi Kanbe Shinmeisha

A shrine founded on land that supported Ise

Akumi Kanbe Shinmeisha is a Shinto shrine in Hatchodori, Toyohashi City, Aichi Prefecture, whose five main buildings, completed in 1930, were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 10 September 2010. Shrine tradition dates the founding itself to 940. The grounds face National Route 1 and back onto Toyohashi Park, the site of the former Yoshida Castle.

The name is made of three parts. Akumi is the old name of this district; kanbe means an estate whose produce supported the Grand Shrine of Ise; shinmeisha is a shrine to Amaterasu Sume-okami, the sun deity enshrined at Ise. Read straight through, the name says: the shrine to Amaterasu in the Ise estate at Akumi. The history is in the name itself.

That estate was Akumi-no-sho in Mikawa Province, granted to Ise by Emperor Suzaku in thanksgiving for the suppression of Taira no Masakado's rebellion. Onakatomi no Motomori, a collateral member of the family that supplied Ise's high priests, came here as administrator and enshrined the deity. The Jingu Zatsureishu records that rice, sake, silk, oil, thread and paper were sent from this land to Ise every year. The estate system is long gone; the name kept the relationship on record.

Under the warrior governments the Imagawa clan, rulers of Mikawa, rebuilt the halls and presented land, swords and the masks used in the shrine's festival. In 1505 Imagawa Ujichika had Makino Kohaku build Imahashi Castle, later known as Yoshida Castle, and the shrine was rebuilt as its guardian of the northeast quarter under the name Jonai Shinmeigu. Successive castle lords maintained that patronage until the Meiji era.

In 1885 the army took over the old shrine grounds and the shrine moved south to its present site. Those old grounds are today's Toyohashi Park. The shrine was raised to prefectural rank in 1923, and the halls standing now were built in 1930.

Why five buildings were listed together

The five listed buildings are the main hall (honden), the offering hall and worship hall (heiden and haiden, counted as one building), the kagura hall, the treasury (shinko) and the purification pavilion (temizuya). Their registration numbers run consecutively from 23-0322 to 23-0326. The shrine applied for all of them at once, eighty years after the 1930 rebuilding.

They were not listed under the same criterion. Japan's registration system for tangible cultural properties, created in 1996, uses three criteria. The main hall and the offering and worship halls qualify under the first, "a model of design"; the kagura hall, treasury and purification pavilion under the third, "a contribution to the historical landscape of the nation."

The split reflects how the precinct came together. Ridge tablets confirm that Sunami Takashi, an engineer of the Shrine Bureau of the Home Ministry, took part in designing the main hall and the offering and worship halls. They date from the years when the state was standardising shrine architecture across the country, and they follow the shinmei-zukuri form closely: the main hall's two free-standing ridge posts lean slightly inward and are cut thicker at the base, six billets sit along the ridge, and the crossed finials are the extended ends of the bargeboards rather than pieces added on top.

The other three were never meant as models. The kagura hall dates from 1885, the year the shrine moved here, and is the only one of the five older than 1930. It has a boat-bottom ceiling and a pine painted on the rear board wall, the vocabulary of a noh stage brought into a shrine precinct. The treasury is reinforced concrete, chosen against fire, yet its eaves curve and its corner rafters are shaped to read as a traditional plaster storehouse. The purification pavilion covers about ten square metres, and its ridge tablet does not name Sunami; its designer remains unknown.

What the precinct offers, then, is a group of halls raised in a single campaign in 1930, with one older stage left standing among them and a modern-structure treasury mixed in. Listing the five together recognises that combination as a single landscape rather than five separate achievements.

Walking the precinct

You can enter from the Route 1 side or from the Toyohashi Park side. Just inside the torii, near the start of the approach, stands the purification pavilion; every listed building lies beyond it. Follow the axis of the approach and you reach the worship hall, 18.2 metres wide, set broadside at the end, with the main hall behind it. The open ground in front of the worship hall is where the red demon and the tengu confront each other during the festival.

To the southwest of the approach is the kagura hall, facing the treasury across a short gap. Two tiled roofs of similar mass answer each other on the western side of the grounds. The main hall cannot be seen from the front because the worship hall stands before it. Walk around to the east and it appears against the trees of Toyohashi Park. From the northeast corner the outlines of the two ridge posts read clearly, and the taper cut into them shows better in low winter light than at midday.

There is more here than the listed five. Behind the main hall to the left stand three subsidiary shrines in one building, Gekusha, Takanomiyasha and Izosha; to the near left is the Gokoku Shrine, to the near right Sarutahikosha, and to the far right Mitsuminesha and Sozainarisha. The grounds also hold a pine said to have been a resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the octagonal platform used in the festival. The principal deity is Amaterasu Sume-okami, with Emperor Chuai, Empress Jingu, Emperor Ojin, Homusubi, Takemikazuchi, Futsunushi and Sugawara no Michizane enshrined alongside.

None of the five buildings is open inside. All can be studied from the grounds, and there is no prescribed route. Winter mornings, when the light comes in low, suit the architecture best.

The demon festival of 10 and 11 February

The shrine's great annual observance is the Toyohashi Oni Matsuri, held every year on 10 and 11 February. It was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property on 28 January 1980 under the name "the demon festival of Toyohashi Shinmeisha." It takes dengaku, a performing art popular from the Heian through the Kamakura periods, and works the myth of Japan's founding into it; the designation rests on how little the old form has been altered.

Fourteen parish districts divide the two days of ritual between them: kagura dances, dengaku, ceremonial archery, divination and the procession of the deity. The best known episode is the "teasing of the tengu and the red demon." The unruly demon and the martial tengu fight with everything they have, and the defeated demon runs out of the precinct scattering hard candy and white flour. Anyone dusted with the flour who eats the candy is said to be protected from summer illness.

The festival is not separate from the buildings. The kagura hall is where the performances take place, and the food-offering bay and musicians' bay at either end of the worship hall are positioned to serve the order of the rites. For anyone who wants to look at the architecture quietly, these are the two days to avoid. For anyone who wants to know what the buildings are for, they are the only two days.

Visiting and access

The precinct is free to enter and there are no set hours. The shrine office receives visitors daily from 9:00 to 16:00 for prayers, goshuin seal stamps and amulets; the telephone number is 0532-52-5257. No notice restricts photography of the exteriors, but during rites it is worth a word at the office first.

The streetcar is the easy way in. The Toyohashi Railroad Azumada Line starts at Toyohashi Ekimae, immediately outside the east exit of Toyohashi Station, which is served by the Shinkansen, JR and Meitetsu lines. Any car will do: those bound for Akaiwaguchi, Undokoen-mae or Keirinjo-mae all stop nearby. Get off at Shiyakusho-mae or Toyohashi Koen-mae, about seven minutes from the station, then walk roughly three minutes. The fare is a flat 200 yen for adults and 100 yen for children regardless of distance, and IC transit cards are accepted.

By car, the address is 3-17 Hatchodori, Toyohashi. The shrine sits on National Route 1 immediately east of the Toyohashi police station and has a car park. From the Toyokawa direction, turn left at the Nishi-Hatcho intersection and continue past the police station. From the Hamamatsu direction, turn right at the Hatchodori 3-chome intersection and then left immediately after. The shrine notes that map applications and car navigation systems sometimes show the entrance as closed to traffic when it is not.

A short walk north brings you to Toyohashi Park, which is both the former shrine grounds and the site of Yoshida Castle. Seeing the halls and then walking to the castle site gives a physical sense of how short the 1885 move actually was.