Kanda Shrine

The Guardian Shrine of Edo, Said to Date from 730

Kanda Shrine (神田神社, Kanda Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Sotokanda, Chiyoda City, Tokyo, traditionally founded in 730, and eight of the reinforced-concrete shrine buildings it rebuilt in 1934 were entered on Japan's national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 19 September 2003. Most people know it as Kanda Myōjin (神田明神, often spelled Kanda Myojin); the formal name Kanda Shrine dates from a renaming in the Meiji era.

Three deities are enshrined at Kanda Shrine. The first seat belongs to Ōnamuchi-no-Mikoto, popularly called Daikoku-sama; the second to Sukunahikona-no-Mikoto, known as Ebisu-sama; and the third to Taira no Masakado, the tenth-century warrior. The shrine serves as the tutelary shrine of 108 neighbourhood associations, among them Kanda, Nihonbashi, Akihabara, Otemachi and Marunouchi.

Shrine tradition credits the founding to Makandaomi, a member of the Izumo clan, at Shibasaki village in what is now Otemachi, close to the mound known as Masakado's grave. In 1309 the itinerant Ji-sect monk Shinkyō pacified Masakado's spirit and had it enshrined here as well.

According to the shrine, prayers for victory were offered on behalf of Tokugawa Ieyasu before the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Once the shogunate was established, the shrine was moved in 1616 to its present hilltop, which guarded the northeast approach to Edo Castle, the direction traditionally feared as the demon's gate, and the shogunate built its halls. For the rest of the Edo period it was honoured as the chief guardian shrine of the city. Emperor Meiji came to worship here in 1874.

After the 1923 Earthquake: A Shrine Rebuilt in Concrete

The Edo-period sanctuary at Kanda Shrine, built by the shogunate in 1782, was a timber complex in the Gongen-zukuri layout, lacquered vermilion throughout. It burned in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

Parishioners began planning a replacement almost immediately, and in 1934 a new complex was completed in steel-framed reinforced concrete, again lacquered vermilion from end to end. The Agency for Cultural Affairs records that Itō Chūta served as consulting architect while Ōe Shintarō and Satō Kōichi carried out the design. The shrine describes the arrangement, with the main hall, offering hall and worship hall joined in a single line and a food-offering hall and a treasure house set close on either side, as a new type for shrine architecture of the early Showa years.

Making concrete look like timber took deliberate effort. The shrine explains that the roof trusses were made of steel to lighten the load, and that the spacing between columns was narrowed slightly so the buildings would carry the proportions of wooden architecture.

During the air raids on Tokyo in 1945, most structures in the precinct were destroyed, but the fireproof sanctuary came through with only slight damage. An inner annex was added beside the main hall in 1989, and the whole complex was repainted and repaired in a programme that ran from 1994 to 1999. The shrine's plans for its 1,300th anniversary list further repainting of the halls and gates and the replacement of damaged copper roof sheathing.

The Eight Registered Structures and How to Walk Them

The eight registered structures at Kanda Shrine are the main hall, offering hall, worship hall, shinsenjo (food-offering hall), treasure house, mizugaki fence, east gate and west gate. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 13-0149 to 13-0156; all eight were entered in the 38th registration round on the same day, with official notice following on 17 October 2003. The shrine points out that the year coincided with the 400th anniversary of the opening of the Edo shogunate.

The worship hall at the front of the precinct is the anchor of the layout. Behind it, to the north, the offering hall and main hall follow in a straight line, so that three roofs step back one after another. The shinsenjo stands east of the main hall and the treasure house west of it in near-mirror positions, and the mizugaki fence bends around the main hall between those two buildings. The east gate adjoins the shinsenjo on its south side and the west gate adjoins the treasure house; low fences run from each gate to the flanks of the worship hall, closing off both sides of the complex.

The worship hall is by far the largest, with a building area of 335 square metres. The main hall covers 63 square metres, the offering hall 46, the shinsenjo 19 and the treasure house 17. The mizugaki fence runs for 60 metres, and each gate is 1.8 metres wide with 14 metres of low fencing attached. Seven of the eight date from 1934; the fence was finished three years later, in 1937.

The registration criteria split into two. The five buildings were registered as works that set a standard in design, while the fence and the two gates were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape.

A good circuit starts at the front torii and the Zuishinmon gate, then pauses before the worship hall. Walk around to the right, on the east side, for the shinsenjo, the east gate and the main hall roof above the fence; the left, western side shows the treasure house and west gate in almost the same arrangement reversed. From either flank the three roofs of the worship hall, offering hall and main hall read clearly as a stepped sequence.

The Kanda Festival

The great event of the Kanda Shrine calendar is the Kanda Festival, held in May every second year. At its core are the procession in which the deities travel in a phoenix-crowned palanquin and portable shrines through the parish districts of Kanda and Nihonbashi, and the day when neighbourhood mikoshi are carried into the precinct one after another; the forecourt of the worship hall is then packed with bearers and onlookers. The palanquin and shrine mikoshi used in the procession are kept in a dedicated storehouse within the grounds.

Getting to Kanda Shrine and Visiting

The closest station to Kanda Shrine is Ochanomizu on the JR Chuo and Sobu lines, about five minutes on foot from the Hijiribashi exit. The shrine also gives seven minutes from the Electric Town exit of JR Akihabara station (Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines), five minutes each from Ochanomizu on the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line, Shin-Ochanomizu on the Chiyoda Line and Suehirocho on the Ginza Line, and seven minutes from Akihabara on the Hibiya Line. Toei bus route Cha 51 stops at Kanda Myojin, one minute from the grounds.

Parking for worshippers is limited to a handful of spaces. Drivers are asked to pass under the main torii, enter through the side gate to the right of the Zuishinmon and park on the north side of the halls.

Entry to the precinct is free. The shrine's own FAQ says visitors are welcome to come in by the back approach or the Otokozaka stone stairs as well as the main entrance. Formal prayers inside the worship hall, known as shōden sanpai, can be arranged on the day without a reservation at the reception desk on the ground floor of the shrine's Culture Exchange Hall, EDOCCO.

All eight registered structures remain in ritual use. On an ordinary visit they are seen from the grounds, and the only interior visitors can enter is the worship hall during a prayer service. Viewing points and access conditions for each structure are covered on its own page.