Engishiki Divine Name Book

A Scroll That Names 2,861 Shrines

Two thousand eight hundred sixty-one shrines, housing 3,132 enshrined deities. That is the count recorded in the Engishiki Jinmyocho, the official register of shrines recognized by the Japanese imperial court in the year 927. At Amanosan Kongo-ji, a Shingon Buddhist temple in the hills of Kawachinagano, Osaka Prefecture, a single handscroll preserves the first volume of this register in a copy made in 1127, during the closing decades of the Heian period.

The scroll was designated a National Treasure on February 22, 1952, in the category of calligraphy and classical books. Its value is textual rather than decorative. Because the original tenth-century manuscript of the Engishiki has been lost entirely, scholars depend on early copies like this one to reconstruct what the court actually wrote down eleven centuries ago.

The register reads like an administrative document, which is exactly what it was. Shrines appear province by province, district by district, with notations marking which received offerings directly from the central government and which through provincial governors, and which ranked as major or minor shrines. There are no legends, no descriptions of deities, no poetry. Yet for historians of Japanese religion, few documents carry more weight.

The Engishiki: A Legal Code That Became a Time Capsule

The Engishiki itself is a compendium of procedural law. Compilation began in 905 on the order of Emperor Daigo, with the statesman Fujiwara no Tokihira initially directing the work, and the finished text of fifty volumes was presented to the throne in 927. Where the ritsuryo legal codes laid out the framework of government, the Engishiki specified the details: how ceremonies should be conducted, what supplies each office required, how taxes in silk and rice were to be assessed.

The first ten of its fifty volumes concern the Jingikan, the Department of Divinities. They cover the annual round of court festivals, the rites of the Ise shrines, the duties of the imperial princess serving at Ise, the enthronement ceremony, and the liturgical prayers known as norito. Volumes nine and ten contain the shrine register, the Jinmyocho. The Kongo-ji scroll corresponds to volume nine, the first half of the register, which opens with the deities worshipped within the imperial palace itself before moving outward to the provinces.

Every shrine on the list came to be known as a shikinaisha, a "shrine within the Engishiki." The term still matters. Walk up to shrines across Japan today and you will find the word carved on stone markers at their gates, cited as proof that worship at that spot has continued for more than a millennium. Whenever such a claim is checked, it is checked against this register.

No original manuscript survives. The oldest witnesses to the text are the Kujo family manuscripts now held by the Tokyo National Museum, copied in the tenth to eleventh centuries, and the Kongo-ji scrolls bearing a date of 1127, the second year of the Daiji era. The Kongo-ji copy thus stands within two centuries of the work's completion, close enough to preserve readings that later copies garbled or lost.

Why a Buddhist Temple Guards a Register of Shinto Shrines

It may seem odd that the authoritative list of Shinto shrines survives in the storehouse of an esoteric Buddhist temple. In medieval Japan it was not odd at all. Kami worship and Buddhism were deeply interwoven, and large temples doubled as centers of learning where texts of every kind were copied, collated, and preserved. The temple itself notes that medieval Kongo-ji functioned somewhat like a university, assembling specialist books across many fields of knowledge.

Kongo-ji is traditionally said to have been founded by the monk Gyoki in the Nara period, and the young Kukai is said to have trained here. The temple fell into decline before being revived in the late twelfth century, when it won the devotion of Hachijoin, sister of Retired Emperor Goshirakawa. Because women were admitted here at a time when Mount Koya excluded them, Kongo-ji earned the name Nyonin Koya, "Mount Koya for women."

The scriptorium that flourished here left more than the Jinmyocho. Kongo-ji also preserves three further Heian-period scrolls of the Engishiki, volumes twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, designated a National Treasure as a separate set, along with a vast manuscript canon of Buddhist scripture running to more than four thousand scrolls, assembled mainly in the Kamakura period.

History pressed in on the temple once more in the fourteenth century. From 1354 the Southern Court made Kongo-ji its base: Emperor Gomurakami resided in the subtemple Manin, while three retired emperors of the rival Northern line were held in another subtemple nearby. That a provincial mountain temple could host an imperial court says much about the scale and standing Kongo-ji had achieved.

Seeing the Scroll, and the Temple That Keeps It

Here a visitor needs honest expectations. The Jinmyocho is not on regular display at Kongo-ji, and it does not appear in the temple's seasonal treasure openings. Chances to see it come only when it travels to museum exhibitions, which happens rarely. Recent loans include "Kanshin-ji and Kongo-ji" at the Kyoto National Museum in 2022 and the Ninna-ji exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum in 2018. Anyone determined to stand before the scroll should watch the exhibition schedules of the national museums in Kyoto, Tokyo, Nara, and Kyushu.

The temple, on the other hand, is open year round, and it rewards the trip on its own terms. The Kondo, or main hall, houses a seated triad of Dainichi Nyorai flanked by Fudo Myoo and Gozanze Myoo, itself a National Treasure, restored together with the hall in works completed in the 2010s. Around the central precinct stand a pagoda, bell tower, refectory, and gates, a remarkable concentration of buildings designated Important Cultural Properties.

Spring brings a weeping cherry beside the tower gate; autumn turns the surrounding maples red. The temple sits in a fold of wooded hills along the old Amano Kaido road, and the walk from the bus stop through the gate still feels like an approach to a place set apart.

One more way to encounter the Jinmyocho requires no museum at all. Visit any shrine that displays the word shikinaisha and you are reading a citation of this very text. The scroll at Kongo-ji is the master list; the stone markers across the country are its footnotes.

Around Amanosan

Kongo-ji lies in the southern Osaka city of Kawachinagano, where the plain meets the Izumi and Kongo mountain ranges. From Namba in central Osaka, take the Nankai Koya Line to Kawachinagano Station (the Kintetsu Nagano Line also serves the station), then a Nankai bus on the Amanosan route to the Amanosan stop, which sits directly before the temple.

The natural companion visit is Kanshin-ji, another esoteric temple in the same city, whose main hall and seated Nyoirin Kannon are both National Treasures. Seeing the two temples in a day gives a concentrated picture of why this quiet corner of Osaka Prefecture holds such a density of designated cultural property. Hikers can continue toward the Diamond Trail along the Kongo range, and the riverside dam park at Takihata offers an easy half day outdoors in warmer months.