Imamiya Shrine (Miyoshi)

Imamiya Shrine in Tsuji, Ikawa

Imamiya Shrine (今宮神社, Imamiya Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Ikawacho Tsuji, Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture, whose main hall, worship hall, and shinmon gate with its mizugaki fence, all built in 1915, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 1, 2016.

Several shrines in Japan share the name, the best known being Imamiya Shrine in Murasakino, Kita Ward, Kyoto. This site therefore lists the Tokushima shrine as Imamiya Shrine (Miyoshi). The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives its address as 316-1 Tsuji and its owner as the religious corporation Imamiya Shrine.

The precinct sits on a slope above the old line of the Iyo Kaido, the road that once ran west across Shikoku toward Iyo Province. A flight of stone steps climbs from the road, and from the bottom you see the roofs of the shrine stacked one behind another at the top.

A tobacco town and the buildings of Imamiya Shrine

Tsuji was the centre of the old town of Ikawa. The Miyoshi Geopark describes it as a small patch of flat land that, from the early modern period on, prospered by making kizami, the finely shredded tobacco smoked in Japanese pipes.

All three buildings at Imamiya Shrine went up together in 1915. The Agency for Cultural Affairs names their designer as Fukunaga Kakichi of the Tokushima Prefectural Technical School, and says the shrine reflects the wealth the tobacco trade brought to the town. For a small local shrine, having a designer and his institution on record is worth noticing.

The three carry consecutive registration numbers, 36-0130 to 36-0132, and each was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency's note on the worship hall says it helps form a modern shrine frontage, which is the point of the registration: the three together make up the face of a Taisho-period shrine.

How the precinct of Imamiya Shrine is laid out

At the top of the steps of Imamiya Shrine the worship hall stands directly ahead. Behind it, between worship hall and main hall, opens the shinmon, the gate of the inner precinct, and from the gate a mizugaki fence runs around the main hall. The single-bay main hall closes the line at the back.

• Imamiya Shrine Main Hall: single-bay Nagare-zukuri shrine, one storey, timber, copper-sheet roof, building area 6.0 m²
• Imamiya Shrine Worship Hall: one bay square, Irimoya-zukuri hip-and-gable roof with the entrance on the gable end, one storey, timber, copper-sheet roof, building area 16 m²
• Imamiya Shrine Shinmon Gate and Mizugaki Fence: timber gate with a copper-sheet roof and a frontage of 2.7 m; timber fence with a sheet-iron roof, 48 m in total length

The whole group shares one restrained manner. The only real flourish is diamond latticework, set above the gate doors and along the front stretch of the fence; everywhere else the carpentry is left plain. Each building has its own page with details of its form.

Visiting Imamiya Shrine

The nearest station to Imamiya Shrine is Tsuji on the JR Tokushima Line. The shrine lies southeast of the station, about 700 m away in a straight line as measured on a map. You enter by climbing the stone steps from the old Iyo Kaido.

The shrine has no official website and does not appear in the city's tourist listings, so visiting hours, a staffed office and parking could not be confirmed. Imamiya Shrine is cared for by the local community: keep out of the way of any rites or cleaning, and look at the buildings without touching them or the fence.

The worship hall is open between its posts, so from the top of the steps you can look straight through it to the gate, the fence and the roof of the main hall behind. That view is the quickest way to understand how the three registered properties fit together.