Precincts of Kashima Shrine (with the Site of the Kashima District Office)

What the Precincts of Kashima Shrine Site Covers

The Precincts of Kashima Shrine with the Site of the Kashima District Office, centred on Miyanaka in Kashima City, Ibaraki Prefecture, is a group of ancient sites designated a Historic Site on 4 August 1986. According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the designation is a collective name for four areas: the precincts of Kashima Shrine, of Sakato Shrine and of Numao Shrine, together with the remains of the Kashima district office. The designated area totals 620546.46 square metres.

This is a different kind of protection from a building designation. What is being kept here is ground, not architecture. A place where people worshipped a deity and a place where officials collected taxes and ran a province sit inside the same listing.

The eighth-century gazetteer Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki refers to a deity called Kashima no Ame no Ōkami, a name that covered three shrines at once: Kashima, Sakato and Numao. The designation groups those three precincts together because that is how the earliest written source describes the deity.

Digging Up a Single Line of Text

The Fudoki states that the district office lay south of the shrine. Kashima City records that excavation beginning in 1979 confirmed the sentence on the ground, at Kanomukai in Miyanaka, south of Kashima Shrine. A large ditch enclosing a group of tax granaries came to light, and inside it lay charred rice, evidence that a storehouse had burned.

Cloth-impressed roof tiles and a bronze belt fitting were also recovered. Belt fittings were worn by officials, and their presence argues that this was administrative ground rather than an ordinary settlement. The Ibaraki Prefectural Board of Education records that surveys running from 1979 to 1988 exposed a district hall and a granary compound, and established the site as the Kashima district office.

One line in an ancient text, confirmed in the soil twelve centuries later. That match is what makes the Precincts of Kashima Shrine site worth thinking about.

The Designation and How It Has Grown

Two separate criteria were applied to the Precincts of Kashima Shrine site: one covering the remains of capitals, provincial and district halls, castles, government offices and battlefields, and one covering the remains of shrines and temples, former precincts and other sites of worship. Political archaeology and religious archaeology, normally handled apart, overlap in this single listing.

The boundary has kept moving since the designation of 4 August 1986. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database logs measures in 1989, 1999, 2001, 2005 and 2008, and a further extension was made on 10 March 2025. That last addition centred on the area of the kitchen and provisioning quarters, where postholes of pillared buildings, pillared fencing and pit-like features were found, along with quantities of pottery inscribed in ink with characters including one reading Kashima kitchen.

The remains of the district office fall into 3 phases running from the first half of the eighth century to the beginning of the tenth. The offices were rebuilt and rearranged over that span, and the sequence survives as overlapping postholes in the ground.

What There Is to See

The listing splits across four locations, and each reads differently.

The precincts of Kashima Shrine occupy a wooded plateau. Walking the approach, what registers first is not the buildings but the depth of the tree cover. The contrast with the vegetation of the surrounding town makes it obvious that this ground has been fenced off as sacred land since antiquity.

Sakato Shrine and Numao Shrine stand well away from the main shrine. Both are small and quiet. In the framework of the Fudoki, however, the three together constitute one deity, and the designation follows that logic. Only after visiting all three does the shape of what the listing actually names become clear.

The district office site lies about 1.5 kilometres south of the shrine, on the Kanomukai plateau. Nothing stands there. The remains are preserved below ground, and what is visible is an interpretation panel and a flat stretch of land holding the shape of the old enclosure. That can feel thin. Walk it with the outline of the great ditch in mind, the one that boxed the granary compound on all four sides, and the way the plateau edge was used starts to come through.

Visiting the Precincts of Kashima Shrine Site

Every part of the Precincts of Kashima Shrine designation is an open-air site. The shrine precincts can be entered freely during worship hours, and walking the grounds costs nothing. The Sakato and Numao precincts and the district office site are the same: no charge to walk and look. Excavation continues in places, so keep out of any area with fencing or notices.

Outdoor photography is unrestricted. For shrine interiors and for any ritual in progress, follow the guidance issued by Kashima Shrine itself.

Kashima Jingū Station on the JR Kashima Line is the point of arrival; the shrine precincts are about a 10-minute walk away. The Kanomukai district lies south of the station and can be reached on foot, but a car makes more sense if you intend to take in Sakato and Numao as well. Enquiries about excavation results and finds go to the cultural properties staff of the Kashima City Board of Education.