Takemikumari Shrine

Takemikumari Shrine, the water shrine at the foot of Mount Kongo

Takemikumari Shrine (建水分神社, Takemikumari Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Suibun, Chihayaakasaka Village, Osaka Prefecture, moved to its hilltop site in 1334 by the warrior Kusunoki Masashige on the orders of Emperor Go-Daigo according to shrine tradition; its mid-Muromachi main hall is an Important Cultural Property, and four buildings of the precinct, most of them belonging to the auxiliary Nagi Shrine, are Registered Tangible Cultural Properties.

Locals rarely use the formal name. Ask for Suibun Jinja (水分神社), the everyday reading of the same characters, and people will know where you mean; older names include Mikumari Daimyojin and Kami-no-Mikumari-no-Miya. The shrine explains that mikumari means dividing water fairly among users, a word worn down from mizu-kubari, "distributing water." It has long been the guardian shrine of Mount Kongo, the tutelary shrine of 18 surrounding villages, and the clan shrine of the Kusunoki, the local warrior family whose most famous son was Masashige.

The principal deity is Ame-no-Minakanushi, worshipped together with four water and purification deities. Shrine tradition dates the founding to the reign of the legendary Emperor Sujin, when a water god was enshrined at the foot of the Kongo and Katsuragi mountains, and the shrine is listed in the Engishiki register of the 10th century.

From clan shrine to a center of Kusunoki veneration

According to the shrine, the main hall, worship hall and bell tower were rebuilt when Takemikumari Shrine moved uphill in 1334, and in 1337 the court granted it the highest divine rank. That same year Emperor Go-Daigo, mourning Masashige, who had died at the Battle of Minatogawa the year before, had a statue of him carved and enshrined here. This was the beginning of the auxiliary shrine called Nagi Shrine (南木神社), which the shrine describes as the oldest shrine dedicated to Masashige. The name Nagi is said to come from splitting the character for camphor tree, kusunoki, into two parts.

The warlord Oda Nobunaga confiscated the shrine lands and burned the precinct during his campaign in Kawachi, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi later donated rice fields and the shrine recovered. In 1697 the local lord Ishikawa Fusashige moved the leaning Nagi Shrine from behind the main hall to its present site.

Modern hero worship of Masashige reshaped the grounds. Around 1920 a treasure house was built to display relics associated with him, paid for by donations from parishioners and the wider public. The Nagi Shrine buildings were crushed by an old pine felled in the Muroto Typhoon of 1934, then rebuilt to a design modeled on shrines of the national kanpeisha rank, a generous standard for an auxiliary shrine; the work was finished in 1940.

The protected buildings of Takemikumari Shrine

The Important Cultural Property main hall is in fact three buildings. The central hall is a one-bay Kasuga-zukuri shrine, the halls on either side are two-bay Nagare-zukuri shrines, and covered corridors link all three under roofs of Hiwadabuki cypress bark. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates them to the mid-Muromachi period, while the shrine attributes them to Masashige's rebuilding of 1334. Their protection goes back to April 7, 1900, when, as the shrine notes, they became the first shrine buildings in Osaka Prefecture designated under the old system of specially protected buildings; they became an Important Cultural Property when the present law took effect in 1950.

The four Registered Tangible Cultural Properties were registered together on February 4, 2021, in the 97th round, as numbers 27-0814 to 27-0817: the Nagi Shrine main hall, its worship hall and offering hall, its tsuiji wall, and the treasure house. The Agency's database dates the Nagi Shrine main hall and wall to 1938, the worship hall and offering hall to 1940, and the treasure house to around 1920.

In its report the Agency noted that the wall around the inner sanctuary and the treasure house on the lower terrace together shape the landscape of the shrine grove. The two Nagi Shrine halls were registered as models of design, and the wall and treasure house for their contribution to the historic landscape.

Finding your way around Takemikumari Shrine

The precinct climbs a slope in terraces, and the Agency's descriptions place each building on a lower or middle terrace. Visitors enter from the north. Near the entrance, on the lower terrace, is the shrine office, and facing it the treasure house stands on a Nozurazumi stone wall of rough fieldstones, its front turned to the approach.

Climb the slope to the south side of the middle terrace and you reach Nagi Shrine. Its worship hall faces north, with the offering hall and main hall behind, and the tsuiji wall wraps around the sides and back of the main hall. The water basin pavilion is close by, and steps lead from there up to the worship hall of Takemikumari Shrine itself. The three Important Cultural Property halls stand above it.

The great stone torii dates from 1690. The shrine gives its height as 7.1 meters and the length of its top beam as 10.6 meters, among the largest stone torii built before modern times in Japan. A pair of large stone guardian lions from 1860 is worth a look too. What to see at each building, and from where, is covered on its own page.

Visiting Takemikumari Shrine

The grounds of Takemikumari Shrine are open for worship and free of charge. The Osaka Convention and Tourism Bureau lists the shrine office as open 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every day. Ordinary visitors may go only as far as the main worship hall; the three Important Cultural Property halls behind it cannot be approached.

By public transport, take the Kongo Furusato Bus Shiraki Line from Tondabayashi Station on the Kintetsu Nagano Line and get off at Suibun, about 25 minutes; the shrine is a 1-minute walk. Buses run only a few times a day, so check the return times before you set out. A taxi from Tondabayashi Station takes about 15 minutes, and the shrine advises asking for Suibun Jinja rather than the formal name.

Free parking for 25 cars is split among several small lots, including one by the shrine office just inside the north entrance and one between Nagi Shrine and the water basin pavilion. The shrine's own postal address is 357 Suibun, a different lot number from the registered location of 1060 Oaza Suibun used by the Agency.

Two festival days draw crowds. The spring festival on April 25 falls on the day Masashige is said to have been born, and locals call it Kusunoki-san. The autumn festival on the third Saturday of October carries the portable shrine about 1 kilometer downhill to its resting place, where nearly 20 festival floats gather. For inquiries, call Takemikumari Shrine at 0721-72-0534.