Omi Shrine

A Shinto complex built in 1940 for Emperor Tenji

Omi Shrine (近江神宮, Ōmi Jingū) is a Shinto shrine in Jingu-cho, Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture, enshrined on 7 November 1940 to the spirit of Emperor Tenji. The 40 buildings and structures standing in its precinct were entered on the national register of tangible cultural properties on 9 October 1998 as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties.

Emperor Tenji moved the capital from Asuka to Otsu on the shore of Lake Biwa in 667. Local efforts to build a shrine to him on the site of that short-lived capital began in the late Meiji period. A stone marker for the Shiga palace site went up in 1895 at the initiative of the mayor of what was then the town of Otsu, and in 1908, on the tenth anniversary of Otsu becoming a city, the mayor opened a petition campaign for the shrine's founding.

The plan took shape in the 1930s. A support association was formed on 12 October 1937, and the founding was announced on 1 May 1938. Ground was broken on 10 June that year, the date observed in Japan as Time Day. More than 70,000 residents of the prefecture worked on the construction as volunteers.

Work finished in 1940, the year 2600 in the traditional imperial reckoning. On 7 November an imperial envoy attended the enshrinement rite. Where the Otsu palace had actually stood was still unknown at the time. Only postwar excavation confirmed that the precinct of Omi Shrine occupies part of the palace site or the ground immediately beside it.

A precinct stacked up a hillside

The layout was planned by the Shrine Bureau of the Home Ministry, with Sunami Takashi and Tani Shigeo as architects. The site of Omi Shrine lies on the lower slopes west of Lake Biwa and is nowhere level. Adapting the arrangement to that slope is what distinguishes the complex. The order in which you walk it is the order of its heights.

The approach starts at the First Torii, just beyond the railway crossing. Straight ahead, a flight of stone steps leads to the Second Torii, with the purification pavilion off to the right. More steps bring you to the two-storey gate, and beyond it the Outer Worship Hall. This is where visitors pray.

Behind the Outer Worship Hall the ground rises in stages: the corridors and wing corridors enclosing the inner precinct, the Inner Worship Hall at its western end, the roofed stairway corridor climbing from there, the Middle Gate at the top of that climb, the connecting corridor running on from the gate, and at the highest level the Main Hall with its prayer hall in front. The public may go no further than the Outer Worship Hall, so the stacking has to be read from outside.

North of the outer precinct stand the Kagura Hall and the assembly hall, entered through the North Gate. To the south are the shrine offices, the Saikan reception building and the imperial envoy's entrance, with a side torii marking the start of the path that serves them. The shrine's own website describes this architecture as Omi-zukuri, or Showa-zukuri.

Forty properties registered on one day

Omi Shrine holds 40 Registered Tangible Cultural Properties, numbered consecutively from 25-0054 to 25-0093. Every one of them was registered on 9 October 1998 and gazetted on the 26th of the same month, and all 40 were listed under the same criterion, that of serving as a model of design.

The range runs from the Main Hall to the torii. Around the innermost enclosure: the Main Hall, the prayer hall, the connecting corridor, the Middle Gate, the wing corridors, the rear gate and the lattice walls. Around the inner precinct: the Inner Worship Hall, the roofed stairway corridor, the inner precinct corridors. Around the outer precinct: the Outer Worship Hall, the outer corridors and outer lattice walls. Then the working buildings, including the Kagura Hall, the assembly hall, the offering hall, the shrine offices and the Saikan, plus the purification pavilion and three torii. Almost every element that makes up the precinct is on the list.

Construction came in two campaigns. The first finished in 1940 and covered the core from the Main Hall down to the Outer Worship Hall, along with the torii and the purification pavilion. The second, in 1944, added the Kagura Hall and its corridor, the assembly hall and the North Gate. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the second-campaign buildings were finished to a high standard despite the circumstances of the time. The shrine's website presents the complex as a representative work of modern Shinto architecture.

Each building has its own page, where its structure and the things worth looking for are set out.

Visiting and getting there

The precinct of Omi Shrine is open from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Entry is free and photography in the grounds is unrestricted. Prayer services are booked from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., amulets and goshuin seals are issued from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the Clock Museum keeps the same 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. hours with last admission at 4:00 p.m.

The nearest station is Omi-Jingu-mae on the Keihan Ishiyama Sakamoto Line, about a 9 minute walk away. Coming from Kyoto, take the JR Kosei Line to Otsukyo, roughly 11 minutes from Kyoto Station, then walk the 150 metres or so between JR Otsukyo and Keihan Otsukyo. No taxis wait at Omi-Jingu-mae.

By car it is about 10 minutes from the Kyoto-Higashi interchange on the Meishin Expressway, or 15 to 20 minutes from the Otsu interchange. Parking holds 200 cars, rising to 500 over the New Year period with the overflow lot. From the evening of 31 December to 5 January the charge is 1000 yen, or 2000 yen for tour coaches; the rest of the year it is free. Roads around the shrine jam badly at New Year, and the shrine advises public transport then.

For wheelchair users a ramp runs from beside the Clock Museum up to the Outer Worship Hall. There is an accessible toilet next to the museum, and cars carrying disabled visitors may drive that far. Allow about 10 minutes from the car park if you are only going to pray.

In the shrine calendar, the Rokoku festival marking the ancient water clock falls on Time Day, 10 June. Because the opening poem of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu anthology is attributed to Emperor Tenji, competitive karuta tournaments are held here often, and a mounted archery rite is performed on the first Sunday of June, ahead of Time Day.