Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine

Ishikiri-san, an Old Shrine at the Foot of Mount Ikoma

Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine (石切劔箭神社, Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Higashiishikiri-cho, Higashiosaka City, Osaka Prefecture, dedicated to the deities Nigihayahi no Mikoto and Umashimade no Mikoto, and four of its buildings, the main hall, the worship and offering halls and the openwork fence of 1931 together with the Ema Hall of 1960, were listed as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on March 13, 2025.

Around Osaka it is simply Ishikiri-san, and many call it the god of denbo, the local word for boils and swellings, because people have long come here to pray for relief from illness. The characters 劔 and 箭 are old forms meaning sword and arrow, and the name is also printed as 石切剣箭神社, the spelling Higashiosaka City uses.

Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine lies on the western foot of Mount Ikoma. You can walk in from Ishikiri Station on the Kintetsu Nara Line, along a street of small shops, or from Shin-Ishikiri Station on the Kintetsu Keihanna Line.

A Founding Legend and an Entry in the Engishiki

Nobody can say exactly when Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine was founded. According to the shrine, fighting at the end of the Ashikaga period burned every hall and the treasury, and the old records went with them.

The earliest written trace is in the Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku, a court chronicle, which notes that in the ninth month of 865 the shrine's rank was raised from the sixth to the fifth grade. The register of shrines in the Engishiki, compiled in 927, lists it as a shrine of two seats.

A family record written down in 1536 from the oral lore of the hereditary priests, the Isho Denraiki, places the origin on Miyayama, a peak in the Ikoma range, where Nigihayahi was first worshipped. In the reign of Emperor Sujin, it says, Umashimade was enshrined at the lower site, the Shimonosha, which is the main shrine today. The shrine reads the two seats of the Engishiki as these two places.

The upper seat moved to Hikaridoyama in 1650 and became known as the Kaminosha. It was merged into the main shrine under the government's shrine consolidation policy in 1907 and restored in 1972.

The Rebuilding of 1931 and the Later Ema Hall

The present halls were built in 1931, and the deities were moved into them in April 1932. The ridge tablets record that the main hall, the worship and offering halls and the fence were designed by Yoshida Tanejiro, a Nara-born builder who took part in dismantling repairs at Horyuji, including its Great South Gate. The contract went to Kongo Jiichi, then head of the Kongo family of temple carpenters, and his senior pupil Ono Shinichi supervised the work on site.

The carving was by Aino Usaburo of Osaka, and every other trade named on the tablets came from the shrine's own parish. The main hall that the new one replaced was taken down and stored, then set up again in 1972 as the main hall of the restored Kaminosha.

The Ema Hall came 29 years later, in 1960. Votive plaques, or ema, used to hang in an older plaque hall west of the sacred camphor tree, near today's purification spot, until fire destroyed it in 1954. Ono Shinichi, Yoshida's pupil and the site supervisor of 1931, designed the replacement.

The Council for Cultural Affairs recommended all four for registration on November 22, 2024, and they were registered on March 13, 2025, as numbers 27-0942 (main hall), 27-0943 (worship and offering halls), 27-0944 (fence) and 27-0945 (Ema Hall). Three were listed as models of design. The fence was listed for its contribution to the historic landscape.

The shrine says the registration grew out of a survey carried out while planning repairs ahead of 2032, the hundredth anniversary of the move into the new halls.

Four Buildings on One Line from the Torii to the Main Hall

The four registered buildings at Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine stand on a single axis running from the entrance into the heart of the grounds. The Ema Hall doubles as the entrance gate, and the shrine says it was placed deliberately on the line joining the torii and the main hall. Beyond it, straight ahead, is the worship hall.

Behind the worship hall runs the offering hall, and behind that stands the main hall. Seen from outside they read as one linked complex, but the main hall has its own platform and its own roof. The offering hall roof simply tucks in under the eaves of the main hall's front canopy, which the shrine takes as a sign that the deity's house was meant to stay apart from the buildings people enter. The openwork fence runs back from the eaves of the worship hall and closes in both flanks of the main hall.

Just to the left of the main hall stands the sacred camphor tree, said to be about 500 years old, some 6 meters around the trunk and about 18 meters tall.

Hyakudo stones stand near the torii and in front of the main hall, and at almost any hour you will see people walking back and forth between them. This is ohyakudo mairi, the hundredfold prayer the shrine is best known for, and all four buildings sit in the middle of that coming and going.

Getting to Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine and When to Go

The nearest station is Shin-Ishikiri on the Kintetsu Keihanna Line, about 7 minutes' walk from Ishikiri Tsurugiya Shrine. From Ishikiri Station on the Kintetsu Nara Line it takes about 15 minutes, most of it along the shop-lined approach.

The grounds are open 24 hours a day. The amulet counter is staffed from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Prayer rituals and blessings are received from 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., except on the 9th, 19th and 29th of each month. The hundredfold prayer can be made at any time, but not from 10:00 p.m. on December 31 through the first three days of the new year.

By car, the shrine is about 5 minutes from the Mizuhai exit of Hanshin Expressway Route 13 or the Nishi-Ishikiri ramp of the Daini Hanna Road. There are two car parks, south and north, charging 300 yen for the first hour and 100 yen for each further 30 minutes. The south lot is open 24 hours and the north lot from 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Spaces are limited, and the shrine asks visitors to come by train if they can.

Personal snapshots and scenery photos need no permission. Photography inside the worship hall and the kagura hall, or in any area the shrine marks as off limits, is not allowed, nor are tripods, stepladders or drones. What to look for at the main hall, the worship and offering halls, the fence and the Ema Hall, and where to stand to see each one, is covered on their own pages.