Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable

What the Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable Is

The Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable (感田神社神馬舎, Kanda Jinja Shinmesha) is a small shelter for a votive horse, built in 1758 at Kanda Shrine in Naka, Kaizuka City, Osaka Prefecture, and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 23 October 2008. It is the oldest of the shrine's twelve registered buildings.

It stands on the southern edge of the grounds, immediately east of the South Gate. The single-storey timber building measures 2.6 by 1.5 metres, a building area of 3.3 square metres, with a gabled roof of pantiles and its entrance on the gable end, the arrangement called Tsumairi. Inside stands a carved wooden horse.

A shinme is a horse offered to a shrine as a mount for the deity. Many shrines gave a statue or a painted votive plaque in place of a live animal, and this building exists to shelter such a statue.

A Building and a Horse from the Same Year

According to Kaizuka City, dedication tablets that survive with the Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable show that its wooden horse was carved in 1758 by Kishigami Buzaemon and painted in 1810. The shelter and the statue were made in the same year, and the colour came half a century later.

The air raid on Kaizuka in July 1945 burned Kanda Shrine's main hall and kagura hall. The horse stable was damaged but not destroyed.

It was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape. The Agency for Cultural Affairs singles it out as a building that houses the wooden horse and helps form the traditional view at the front of the shrine.

What to Look For

Look at the roof of the Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable from the side. It is not flat but swells very slightly upward along its length, a gentle convex curve that softens the little building.

The posts are square in section and support the purlins and beams. Only the back wall is solid board; the other sides have vertical lattice up to waist height, and the upper part of the long sides is filled with diamond lattice and similar screens, letting air through while keeping the horse on view.

Look through the lattice for the horse itself. The statue is not part of the registration, but it is the reason the building exists.

Visiting the Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable

The Kanda Shrine Sacred Horse Stable stands in the open and cannot be entered. You view the horse through the lattice (checked 26 September 2026).

It is immediately east of the South Gate, on your right as you come in from the southern road. Please do not press against the lattice or reach through it. No photography rules are published. Directions to the shrine are on the Kanda Shrine page.