Tomi Shrine

An ancient shrine on the hill above the Tomio River

Tomi Shrine (登彌神社, Tomi Jinja) is a Shinto shrine on a hill in Ishikicho, Nara City, Nara Prefecture, listed in the Engishiki register of shrines compiled in 927, and its five precinct buildings, the main hall, worship hall, sacred food offering hall, purification pavilion and shrine office, were entered in the national register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 3 April 2020.

The name is read Tomi, with a first character that the Agency for Cultural Affairs writes in its older form. Nara City uses the simplified form on its page about the shrine's divination rite. Both refer to the same place. Locally the shrine is also called Konoshima Daimyojin, and that name, rather than Tomi, is what most of the stone lanterns along the approach carry. The nearest bus stop is Konoshima as well.

Shrine tradition traces the founding to the reign of the first emperor, Jimmu, and holds that the Tomi clan later enshrined their ancestor Nigihayahi and his wife here. The shrine's name is said to come from that clan. A further tradition connects the site to 768, when a deity travelling from Hiraoka in Kawachi to Kasuga is supposed to have halted here; on the strength of that visit the shrine also enshrines Amenokoyane. None of this is documented outside the shrine's own account.

There is no single main hall. Two structures of identical size and design stand side by side, the western one for Kamimusubi, Tomi no Nigihayahi and Amenokoyane, the eastern one for Takamimusubi and Homudawake. Counting the deities gathered into the small subsidiary shrines on either side, Tomi Shrine holds twenty-two in all.

1939: from village shrine to prefectural shrine

The precinct took its present shape in 1939, the year Tomi Shrine was raised from village rank to prefectural rank. A change of rank was not merely administrative. It obliged a shrine to bring its buildings up to the standard the new rank implied. The worship hall was taken apart and rebuilt, and a sacred food offering hall and a purification pavilion were put up. The shrine office had gone up the year before, in 1938.

A stone pillar on the approach commemorates the promotion. The shrine records that the calligraphy on it was written by Baron Suzuki Kantaro, then a privy councillor.

The five registered buildings therefore belong to two different moments. The main hall of 1824 and the worship hall, said to date from about 1799, come from the Edo period. The offering hall, purification pavilion and shrine office belong to the 1938 to 1939 campaign. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 29-0282 to 29-0286, which is how the register records a group assessed as one precinct rather than as five separate buildings.

One of the five was listed under a different criterion. The main hall qualified as "a model of design"; the other four as "a contribution to the historical landscape of the nation."

How the precinct is laid out

The grounds of Tomi Shrine open from south to north and from low ground to high. Past the first torii the approach runs north, climbs a flight of stone steps and ends at the highest terrace, where the main hall faces south. All five buildings sit within about 38 metres of each other along that axis.

The purification pavilion stands to the southwest, early on the approach, which is where a visit properly begins. At the top of the steps the worship hall faces you, with the main hall on the terrace behind and above it. The sacred food offering hall stands on a middle terrace southwest of the main hall, off to the left of the approach, facing east. The shrine office occupies the southeast corner, on the opposite side of the approach from the purification pavilion, facing west.

None of the five is open inside. They are buildings meant to be read from outside, and no fixed route is marked. Morning light reaches the painted surfaces of the main hall better than afternoon light does.

The gruel divination of 1 February

The best known event at Tomi Shrine is the Tsutsugayu rite held at dawn on 1 February. Also called kayu-uranai, gruel divination, it was designated an intangible folk cultural property by Nara City on 1 March 1982.

The method is concrete. Parishioners take the duty in rotation. Before dawn they boil rice and adzuki beans in a large iron pot together with a bundle of 37 green bamboo tubes. After an hour or so the tubes are lifted out, each one assigned to a particular crop, and split open with a knife. How much gruel has entered each tube tells how that crop will fare in the coming year. The rite once belonged to the fifteenth day of the first month and has since moved to its present date.

It takes place in the worship hall, which for one morning a year does the plainest version of the job it was built for.

The rest of the calendar follows the farming year: a prayer for the harvest on 28 February, a thanksgiving for the completed planting on 7 July, a prayer for abundant grain on 7 September, the annual festival on 8 and 9 October, and the first fruits rite on 28 November.

Visiting Tomi Shrine

The grounds are open and there is no admission charge; the Nara City Tourist Association lists the offering as voluntary. No opening hours are published for the shrine office, so anyone hoping for a goshuin seal or an amulet should telephone ahead on 0742-45-1117, the number given on the shrine's own site. There is a car park for worshippers, entered on the left of the front approach, with toilets.

Buses are the practical way in. From the bus centre at Kintetsu Koriyama Station take a service bound for Wakakusadai and get off at Konoshima; turn left onto the lane ahead, bear right at the end, and the first torii is about 5 minutes away. From JR Nara or Kintetsu Nara Station, take a bus for Nara Prefecture General Medical Center and walk about 7 minutes from the terminus. The wooded rise west of the hospital is the shrine.

On foot, it is about 2 kilometres west of Kujo Station on the Kintetsu Kashihara Line, roughly 20 minutes. The walk follows the Tomio River upstream on level ground, and the hill appears only at the end.