25.7.19

Nezu Shrine, Tokyo


Ever since I planned my Tokyo trip this 2019, I was aiming for April or early May. Within that period, I knew that the Nezu Shrine will have their famous Azalea Festival (Tsutsuji Matsuri). Nezu shrine is one the city's "most spectacular spring scenes". But then holiday shifted to later...

This Shinto shrine is located in the Bunkyō ward of Tokyo. You can take the train and stop at Nezu, then walked about 700 meters towards the shrine.



Established in 1705, it is one of the oldest places of worship in the city; several of the buildings on the shrine grounds have been designated as Important Cultural Property. It was built in the Ishi-no-ma-zukuri style of Shinto architecture, following the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō.
Nezu shrine is one of the Tokyo Ten Shrines (Tokyo Jissha).
According to the legend, the Nezu shrine was founded in Sendagi, just north of the current location, in the 1st century by Yamato Takeru (also known as Prince Ōsu), the son of Emperor Keikō. In 1705 the shrine was relocated to Nezu by Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), the fifth shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty, on the occasion of him choosing his successor, Tokugawa Ienobu (1662–1712).

When Emperor Meiji moved his residence from the Kyoto Imperial Palace to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1868-1869, he sent envoys to the shrine to have it intercede with the gods on his behalf.
There is a multitude of torii (=translates to bird abode, I would just simply call it as Japanese Gate) surrounding Nezu Shrine. The two main entrances are marked by big red torii in the myōjin style, very common in Shinto architecture, characterized by curved upper lintels. A placque on top of them reads the name of the shrine. They are flanked by lanterns.

One of the most famous features of the shrine is the path of vermilion torii through the hillside left of the main hall. In the middle of the path there is a viewing platform over a pond of koi, overlooking the main shrine precincts. The subsidiary Otome Inari Shrine is located here.

Another shorter path of torii leads down some stairs from the subsidiary Komagome Shrine to the larger path of torii.

The main building of Nezu shrine is a honden (=main hall) in the Ishi-no-ma-zukuri style, a complex Shinto shrine structure in which the haiden, or worship hall, the heiden, or offertory hall, and the honden, are all interconnected under the same roof.
The whole structure dates from 1706.





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