Amenohinadori-no-Mikoto Shrine

Amenohinadori-no-Mikoto Shrine

Amenohinadori-no-Mikoto Shrine (天日名鳥命神社), on a hill in Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, keeps a main hall and a heihaiden, or worship and offering hall, both built in 1913 and registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 31, 2022 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). It stands beside the road from the castle town of Shikano to that of Tottori and is listed among the shrines of the Engishiki.

According to the Tottori Prefecture Association of Shinto Shrines, it enshrines Amenohinadori-no-Mikoto and Susanoo-no-Mikoto. Its founding date is unknown, but it appears in the register of 927; it took its present name in the early Meiji era, and in 1913 it absorbed Fukutani Shrine and moved to the present hilltop, when both buildings were put up.

The Two Buildings

The main hall is a one-bay nagare-style hall roofed in copper, set high with a veranda on all four sides (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Its decoration is restrained, but the carved frog-leg struts have a modern flourish, and its surviving specifications record how shrines were built in the modern era.

The heihaiden has a tiled hip-and-gable roof entered at the gable end, a front porch with a gently swelling gable and an offering hall projecting at the back (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Its gable pendants, whose full-size drawings survive, are more traditional than the carving of the main hall. Each building is described on its own page.

Visiting

According to the Tottori Prefecture Association of Shinto Shrines, the precinct is on a small hill at the south end of the village, reached by more than 100 stone steps. The annual festival is held on April 15 (or the nearest Sunday) with a kirin-jishi lion dance, and the autumn festival on October 1.