Rikyu Hachimangu

Where the Name Iwashimizu Began

Rikyu Hachimangu (離宮八幡宮, Rikyū Hachimangū) is a Shinto shrine on the old Saigoku Kaido highway in Oyamazaki, Kyoto Prefecture, said to have been founded in 859 for the deity Hachiman, and six of its early Showa-era buildings were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2013.

The shrine tells its own beginning as a story of light and water. Emperor Seiwa, the account goes, received an oracle instructing him to bring Hachiman, protector of the realm, from Usa in Kyushu to the capital. The monk Gyokyo of Daianji in Nara was sent to fetch the deity. Landing at Yamazaki, then a busy port on the Yodo River, he saw a glow on the dark hillside at night, dug a little at its foot and found clear water welling up between the rocks. A shrine was built on the spot and named Iwashimizu Hachimangu, the Hachiman shrine of the rock-pure spring.

The ground had once held Kaya-no-miya, a riverside villa of Emperor Saga, and the shrine later took the name Rikyu Hachimangu, the Hachiman shrine of the detached palace. Across the river on Mt. Otokoyama stands the far better known Iwashimizu Hachimangu, which has a strikingly similar founding story; Rikyu Hachimangu regards itself as the original seat. The spring itself survives as a well called Iwashimizu, to the left of the main sanctuary.

Sources disagree on the founding year by one. The shrine's own history and the Kyoto Prefecture tourism federation give 859, while a prefectural regional office gives 860, and the shrine counted 2010 as its 1150th anniversary, which also implies 860.

The Shrine of Oil

Rikyu Hachimangu is also known as Yuso, the ancestor of oil. According to shrine tradition, a priest in the ninth century devised a lever press called a nagaki and began pressing lamp oil from the seeds of egoma, or perilla. The oil lit the imperial court, temples and shrines before spreading into ordinary homes.

In the medieval period the oil makers organised themselves into a guild, the aburaza, with the shrine as their patron. The guild held a monopoly over buying seed, pressing and selling, and merchants across the provinces needed the shrine's licence to trade oil. By the Muromachi period Oyamazaki oil was sold from northern Kyushu to Mino, and the town itself was granted self-government on the strength of that trade.

Beside the torii today stand a statue of a priest offering a vessel of oil and a stone marking the birthplace of Japanese oil pressing. Oil companies and oil retailers from across the country still worship here, and the industry helped pay for the shrine's rebuilding.

Fire, Railway and a Showa Rebuilding

Nearly everything on the grounds is modern. In 1864, during the Kinmon Incident, the Choshu domain quartered troops at Yamazaki, and shogunate and Satsuma guns shelled the area. The shrine lands, said to have stretched from the Minase River to Enmyoji, burned, and only two gates, the Somon and the Higashimon, came through. Both are now protected by the town of Oyamazaki.

In 1876 the Tokaido Main Line opened between Kyoto and Kobe and took most of what remained of the precinct. That is why the tracks run right beside the grounds and JR Yamazaki Station sits almost at the gate.

Worshippers funded a rebuilding in 1879, and a later reconstruction produced the buildings seen now. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that work as 1928, while the shrine's own history gives 1929. The main hall and worship hall are listed as 1928 and the other four structures as around 1928, which points to a single building campaign.

Repairs have followed at intervals, including a major restoration for the 1100th anniversary and the Heisei-era renovation leading up to the 1150th, which concentrated on the roofs of the main hall, worship hall, middle gate and subsidiary shrines. Groundbreaking for that work took place on July 11, 2009.

Six Registered Buildings

On December 24, 2013, six structures were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties: the main hall, worship hall, Kotengu Shrine, middle gate, temizusho purification pavilion and lattice fence, carrying registration numbers 26-0437 to 26-0442. All six were registered under the criterion of serving as a model of form.

What ties them together is a deliberate look backwards. The Agency's descriptions point to medieval-style detailing in the main hall, heavy proportions in the worship hall, restrained plainness in the Kotengu Shrine, and Kaerumata and Gegyo shared from one building to the next. The value lies less in any single structure than in a whole precinct composed in one historicist key during a single early Showa rebuilding.

The layout is easy to read. The middle gate stands in front of the worship hall and the main hall behind it, all three on one line. A lattice fence wraps the sides and back of the main hall in a U and joins the worship hall at its front ends. The purification pavilion sits southwest of the middle gate, and the Kotengu Shrine stands on the west side of the grounds, facing east.

Walking the Grounds

The grounds front the Saigoku Kaido. The shrine's own site map numbers the route from the Somon gate past the oil-priest statue and the oil-pressing monument to the purification pavilion, the middle gate, the worship hall and the main hall. Five of the six registered structures sit on or just off that line.

From in front of the middle gate you see the curved karahafu gable of the worship hall and, above and behind it, the roof of the main hall. The main hall is closed in by the lattice fence, so the nearest you can get is the outside of the fence, looking through the diamond lattice at the sides and rear. The Iwashimizu well is to the left of the main hall.

The Kotengu Shrine stands away from the main axis on the west side, among a crowd of smaller shrines, including Wakamiya, Takeuchi, Amaterasu, Ebisu, Kashima, Kehi, Kozenji, Koshikake Tenjin and Kora. The shrine's site map helps keep them straight.

Festivals

The most important rite of the year is the spring festival, Hinotosai, held every April. The shrine traces it to the ceremony that sent Hachiman across the river to Otokoyama and says it once ranked alongside Kyoto's Aoi Matsuri. In the guild era a leading figure of the day served as hinokashira, the festival's head. Lamp offerings and a yutate hot-water rite are still performed, and more than 100 companies from the oil industry send representatives.

The autumn festival, Hojoe, is held on September 15.

Visiting and Access

Entry to the grounds is free, and the exteriors of all six registered structures can be seen from within the precinct. None of the interiors are open. The Kyoto Prefecture tourism federation lists reception hours of 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; the shrine office can be reached on 075-956-0218. The shrine's small museum, the Shukokan, can be viewed only by prior arrangement, with a voluntary offering.

No published restriction on photographing the exteriors could be found in material from the shrine or local government. It is courteous to hold off during ceremonies and while people are praying, and to follow any signs on site.

The nearest station is JR Yamazaki on the JR Kyoto Line, 1 minute's walk according to the shrine; Oyamazaki Station on the Hankyu Kyoto Line is 3 minutes away (the tourism federation says about 5). There is no visitor parking, as the shrine's lot is let on monthly contracts only, so come by train.