Saguri Shrine

An Ancient Shrine of Kuse District

Saguri Shrine (雙栗神社, Saguri Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Sayama, Kumiyama, Kuse District, Kyoto Prefecture, recorded as receiving court rank in 859, and its grounds preserve a main hall of 1494 designated an Important Cultural Property and four Edo-period structures that are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties.

The court chronicle Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku notes, in an entry for the first month of 859, that the Saguri deity was raised to the Junior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade. The shrine register of the Engishiki, compiled in 927, lists a shrine of three deities by this name in Kuse District of Yamashiro Province. The present shrine is thought to be the one named in both records.

Where the name comes from is uncertain. According to the Association of Shinto Shrines, shrine tradition holds that it guarded three ancient districts, 羽栗, 殖栗 and 拝志, corresponding to the later villages of Sayama, Sako and Hayashi. One theory says the name, which means twin chestnuts, comes from its position between the two districts with chestnut (栗) in their names; another links it to the Haguri (羽栗) clan, local grandees whose ancestral deity it may have honoured. Later, when a separate Hachiman shrine was founded in Sako, Saguri Shrine became the tutelary shrine of the two villages of Sayama and Hayashi.

In the medieval period a second identity was layered on. A shrine history with a colophon dated 1676 says a Hachiman deity was invited to the foot of a great tree in 1125, and that an imperial envoy came in 1162, after which the shrine took the name Atemoto Ippon Hachimangū. The story reflects the era when Sayama lay within the estates of Iwashimizu Hachimangū. Five Buddhist temples attached to the shrine stood in Sayama and Hayashi, and a set of 600 scrolls of the Great Wisdom Sutra was kept in the sanctuary.

The separation of Shinto and Buddhism in the Meiji era closed those temples, and the sutras were moved to 大松寺, a temple in Sayama. In 1882 the shrine returned to its ancient name.

Five Historic Structures

Five buildings and structures at Saguri Shrine are on the national lists. The centrepiece is the main hall, a three-bay Nagare-zukuri sanctuary roofed in cypress bark. The national database dates it to 1494 and gives its designation date as 28 August 1907; a ridge tablet and a former side-panel transom are designated with it as associated items.

The other four were registered together on 25 April 2014, with consecutive registration numbers from 26-0453 to 26-0456. The stone torii dates from 1702, the worship hall from 1785, and the main hall gate and the tamagaki fence from the late Edo period (about 1751 to 1830). The fence was altered in 1961 and restored to its late Edo form in 2019.

Read together, they show how the precinct grew. The Muromachi main hall is the core, and over roughly 130 years of the mid and late Edo period the entrance torii, the worship hall, and the gate and fence of the inner precinct were added around it. All four were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape, because it is the ensemble that makes the shrine.

Walking the Grounds

The stone torii stands at the western edge of the grounds, a large granite gate of the myōjin type that marks the way in. Continue to the shrine buildings and the worship hall faces you, a divided hall with an open passage through its centre; through that passage you see the brightly painted main hall gate. Worship hall, gate and main hall stand in a line, and the tamagaki fence runs from both sides of the gate to enclose the main hall.

The main hall sits inside the fence and cannot be entered, so its carvings and colour are viewed from outside.

North of the main hall rises the sacred camphor tree. Kumiyama Town gives its height as 30 metres and its girth as 535 centimetres, with an estimated age of 400 to 500 years. It was chosen as one of the 200 natural sites of Kyoto in 1991 and placed under the town's protection in 1996. A small Inari shrine sits at its foot, and a sacred rope is tied around the trunk. Evergreen broadleaf trees such as wild camellia grow thickly around it, leaving a genuine shrine forest in the middle of a residential area.

The Shrine Year

According to the Association of Shinto Shrines page (as of February 2023), the main observances at Saguri Shrine are: New Year on 1 January; a rice-gruel divination rite on 15 January; Setsubun on 3 February; the spring festival for the harvest in late March; the Hassaku festival on 31 August; the procession to the resting place on 7 October, the eve festival on 8 October and the return procession on 9 October; the harvest thanksgiving on 23 November; and the year-end rite on 31 December.

The January divination reads the coming harvest from the state of cooked rice gruel, a reminder that this was the guardian shrine of farming villages. The three October days form the autumn festival, when the portable shrine travels out to its resting place and back.

The same page mentions that restoration work on the main hall is under way. Depending on when you visit, the hall may look different from its usual state.

Visiting and Getting There

The grounds of Saguri Shrine are open freely with no admission fee. The shrine office is not staffed every day; the Association of Shinto Shrines notes that parishioner representatives take turns opening the amulet counter on set days and that goshuin shrine stamps are now offered. The Kyoto Prefecture tourism federation lists the telephone number 0774-43-2622. No official guidance on photography could be found.

By public transport, take a Kyoto Keihan Bus on route 21 or 21A from Ōkubo Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line, or from Yodo Station on the Keihan Main Line, and get off at Kumiyama Danchi-guchi (Saguri Jinja-mae). The shrine is about 2 minutes on foot; Kumiyama Town's directions say to walk north from the stop.

The Kyoto Prefecture tourism federation lists no parking, and the streets around are residential, so public transport is the reliable choice.