Nagata Shrine

A Kobe shrine rebuilt in 1928 after a fire

Nagata Shrine (長田神社, Nagata Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Nagatacho, Nagata Ward, Kobe, whose main hall, offering hall, worship hall and 13 other structures, rebuilt in 1928, were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on February 14, 2002. Locals call it "Nagata-san," and the enshrined deity is Kotoshironushi, a god of good fortune whom many worshippers identify with Ebisu.

The shrine traces its founding to the Nihon Shoki chronicle. Returning from a campaign on the Korean peninsula, Empress Jingu received an oracle at the harbor of Muko telling her to worship the god in the land of Nagata, and a woman named Nagahime was appointed to serve him. The shrine dates this to the year 201. In the tenth-century Engishiki registers Nagata was ranked among the most eminent shrines of the realm, and in 1896 it became a government shrine of the middle rank. According to the shrine, the 41 households assigned to support it, known as kanbe, gave the city of Kobe its name.

The halls built in 1661 burned in January 1924 after an electrical fault. What visitors see today, red-lacquered and roofed in copper, is the complex completed in 1928, when the precinct was replanned. The Agency for Cultural Affairs credits the design of the main hall to Kagawa Sadataro.

Sixteen registered buildings and how Nagata Shrine is laid out

Nagata Shrine's 16 buildings carry consecutive registration numbers, 28-0076 to 28-0091, and all were registered on the same day under the criterion of serving as a model of form. They are the main hall, offering hall, worship hall, East and West Gakujo music pavilions, the lattice wall and gate, the Amaterasu, Hachiman, Tsukuyomi, Izumo Taisha, Hiruko and Matsuo subsidiary shrines, the Shinmon Gate, the talisman office and annex, the corridor and side gate, and the kagura hall.

Twelve of the 16 were new in 1928. The other four, the Tsukuyomi, Izumo Taisha, Hiruko and Matsuo shrines, are small late Edo-period shrines that escaped the fire. During the rebuilding they were moved onto new stone platforms, and their timber, originally left bare, was painted red to match the new halls.

The precinct unfolds from south to north. A straight line of structures on a stone retaining wall, made up of the Shinmon Gate, the corridors, the side gate and the talisman office, divides the outer grounds from the inner sanctuary. Straight ahead through the gate stands the worship hall, with the offering hall and then the main hall behind it. The two music pavilions sit at the rear corners of the worship hall, and from them the lattice wall runs back to enclose the main hall on three sides. Inside that wall, the Amaterasu Shrine stands east of the main hall and the Hachiman Shrine west of it.

The Tsukuyomi and Matsuo shrines are on the east side of the worship hall, and the Hiruko and Izumo Taisha shrines face them from the west. The kagura hall stands southeast of the worship hall, facing west. The shrine's own signage sometimes uses other names, such as Izumo-sha for the Izumo Taisha Shrine; this site follows the registered names throughout.

Surviving the war and the 1995 earthquake

The shrine says its halls came through the air raids of the Second World War undamaged, making them the only large shrine complex in Kobe to survive the war. The lacquer-based red and polychrome finish was renewed over three years from 1961, and in October 1980, for the 50th anniversary of the rebuilding, the roofs of the main halls, the Shinmon Gate and the corridors were replaced and the buildings repainted again.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 17, 1995 shifted the halls sideways and left them tilting, close to half-collapsed, though none fell. Four large torii, including one donated in 1651, and about 80 stone lanterns were destroyed. Repairs funded by parishioners were completed in 2000, with a ceremony on July 14 of that year, two years before Nagata Shrine's buildings were registered. On the day of the earthquake the shrine opened its assembly hall as a shelter, and around 150 neighbors lived there for about a month.

Getting to Nagata Shrine and visiting

The nearest stations to Nagata Shrine are Nagata (Nagata Jinja-mae) on the Kobe Municipal Subway and Kosoku Nagata on the Hankyu, Hanshin and Sanyo lines. From the subway, take West Exit 2, pass under the torii and walk north up the Nagata Jinja-mae shopping street. The shrine puts the walk at 5 minutes; a Kobe city guide says about 7. Travelers on JR lines can change to the subway at Shin-Nagata. City buses 3, 4 and 17 stop at Nagata Jinja-mae, right by the grounds. By car, the shrine gives the distance from the Kobe Nagata ramp of Hanshin Expressway Route 31 as about 0.6 kilometers.

The shrine lists no admission fee for the grounds. The shrine office answers the phone from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Prayer rituals are offered without reservation from 9:00 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m., booked at the amulet counter just to the right inside the Shinmon Gate; the offering for an individual prayer is 10,000 yen (13,000 yen from January 1 to 15), and those who book are taken up into the worship hall. Three kinds of goshuin seal stamps are available at the shrine office for 500 yen each.

The main hall, the offering hall and the shrines inside the lattice wall are closed to ordinary visitors, who pray from in front of the worship hall. Where each building is best seen from, and what can be visited, is covered on its own page.

The best-known event is the Tsuinashiki, held in front of the worship hall at Setsubun in early February: seven demons dance with torches and swords, and the rite ends when one splits a great rice cake with an axe. The shrine believes it was already performed in this form in the Muromachi period. The autumn festival takes place in October; in 2026 the main rite is on October 18, with the portable shrine procession that afternoon.