Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine Matsuo Shrine Main Hall

A Shrine Brought Here by Sake Brewers

Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine Matsuo Shrine Main Hall (榊山八幡神社松尾神社本殿, Sakakiyama Hachiman Jinja Matsuo Jinja Honden) is the sanctuary of a small Matsuo shrine within the grounds of Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine in Mitsu, Akitsu-cho, Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture; built around 1929, it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 3, 2020, under registration number 34-0276.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, local people in the sake trade invited the deity here from Matsuo Taisha in Kyoto, a shrine brewers have long revered as the home of the god of sake. Mitsu in Akitsu is known as one of the places that built Hiroshima's brewing tradition, and the Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine Matsuo Shrine Main Hall is that trade's own shrine within the grounds.

It stands northeast of the Hachiman main hall, facing south. The Agency records it as a single-storey timber building with a copper-sheet roof and a building area of just 3.5 square metres, the smallest of the six registered structures.

Full Detail in 3.5 Square Metres

The form is a one-bay Nagare-zukuri shrine with a copper roof: a tiny sanctuary whose front roof slope sweeps forward to cover a porch, the most common shrine form in Japan.

Small as it is, nothing has been left out. A veranda runs across the front and both sides, ending in low screen walls called wakishoji, and a lower Hama-en deck extends across the front. The posts of the inner sanctuary are round and tapered at top and bottom, a treatment called chimaki, and carry a head beam supporting three-bearing Kumimono brackets. Curved Ebi-kōryō beams, bent like a shrimp's back, link the taller sanctuary posts to the lower porch posts.

The same vocabulary of tapered round posts, head beam and three-bearing brackets appears on the Gokoku Shrine main hall in the same grounds. That two small shrines built some 24 years apart, the Matsuo Shrine around 1929 and the Gokoku Shrine around 1953, share it suggests a local way of building shrines that carried through the Showa era.

The registration criterion is contribution to the historic landscape of the country, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs recognizes the building as a record of the local sake industry's prosperity. More than its size, it is the story of brewers bringing a deity all the way from Kyoto that gives the Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine Matsuo Shrine Main Hall its weight.

What to Look For

Start with the posts. The round sanctuary posts narrow at their ends, so seen from the side their outline tapers slightly. This chimaki shaping softens the joint with the head beam above.

Then walk to the side and find the ebi-koryo, rising in an arc from the porch post to the sanctuary post. That the builders included this member on a shrine of 3.5 square metres shows how seriously the patrons and carpenters took the job.

Sake casks presented by brewers of the Meiji and Taisho eras also survive in the grounds. Look for them after visiting the Matsuo Shrine and the link between brewing and this shrine becomes tangible.

Visiting the Matsuo Shrine

The Sakakiyama Hachiman Shrine Matsuo Shrine Main Hall stands northeast of the Hachiman main hall, and its exterior can be seen from the grounds. The interior is not open. It is small, so walk around to the sides as well as the front to see the veranda, screen walls and curved beams.

There is no published photography policy. Photographing the exterior is within ordinary etiquette; check with the shrine office before photographing ceremonies.