Heishi Family Residence Ujigami Shrine

Two Shrines on One Stone Plinth

Heishi Family Residence Ujigami Shrine (瓶子家住宅氏神社, Heishi-ke Jūtaku Ujigami-sha) is a pair of miniature household shrines at Moriai in Fukushima City, Fukushima Prefecture, built in 1888, moved within the grounds in 1984 and entered on the register of Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 29 November 2016. They stand in the northwest of the Heishi family compound, just south of the grain storehouse, facing east and sharing a single stone plinth.

The figures are startling. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database records a combined building area of 0.34 square metres for the pair, so each shrine covers roughly the footprint of a stool. They are closer to finely crafted miniatures than to buildings in any ordinary sense.

Nothing about the carpentry is casual, though. The southern shrine enshrines a land deity written 大地主神, often read Ōtokonushi-no-Kami, and takes the form of a single-bay gabled shrine with a small eave canopy, a Hisashi. The northern shrine houses the Thirty-Three Kannon and fronts its gabled body with a Kōhai porch under a karahafu, the cusped, undulating gable of Japanese carpentry. Both are roofed with thin wooden shingles.

Why It Was Registered

Heishi Family Residence Ujigami Shrine was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency describes it as a carefully made pair of small shrines that forms part of the scenery of the estate. Placing the household deity in the most private corner of the plot belongs to the same ordering principle that put the main house at the centre.

What is enshrined is worth a pause. A Shinto land deity and a Buddhist assembly of Kannon sit side by side on one base. The Meiji government pushed to separate Shinto and Buddhism from 1868, yet twenty years later, in 1888, this household built shrines that set the two together. Inside the family compound, older habits of worship evidently carried on regardless of official policy.

The dates carry a second layer. The Agency records construction in 1888 and relocation in 1984, the same year the grain storehouse next door was moved. Both moves came more than three decades before registration and look like the family's own reorganisation of the northwest corner of the yard.

What to Look For

Seen from the east, the two roofs answer each other. The southern shrine is plain and direct: gable, straight eave, a little canopy. The northern shrine replies with the karahafu, a curve that swells at the centre and dips toward each end, set over a porch only a few hand-spans wide.

The karahafu belongs to the formal front of temples, shrines and palaces. Scaling it down to this size makes the carpenter's work harder rather than easier, since every curved member must still be shaped. Rather than simplifying, the maker reproduced the full form in miniature.

The shared plinth deserves a second look. Two separate shrines could easily have had two bases; setting Heishi Family Residence Ujigami Shrine on one stone platform binds the pair into a single place of prayer, which is presumably how the household treated them.

Shingle roofs are renewed far more often than tile, so the boards seen today need not be those of the Meiji era. The layered edges still cast a fine, close shadow that tile never gives.

Visiting

Heishi Family Residence Ujigami Shrine stands deep inside a private compound and is not open to the public. There is no provision for worship or visits, and neither the Agency nor Fukushima City lists any open days (checked 1 October 2026).

The shrines sit in the northwest corner beside the grain storehouse and are very low, so do not expect a clear view of them from outside the grounds. No notice prohibiting exterior photography could be found, but this is a family's place of prayer and should not be photographed into.

Directions and general visiting conditions are on the Heishi Family Residence page.