Hitachi Izumo Taisha

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

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Hitachi Izumo TaishaOkuninushishimenawaKasamamarriage

Photo: 小石川人晃 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · original

In 1992 the great shrine of Izumo in Shimane divided its deity and enshrined it here, on a hillside beside Route 50 in Kasama — which makes this one of very few shrines in Japan whose founding is within living memory and whose parent institution is a thousand kilometres away. The deity is Okuninushi, the god of marriage and good relationships, and people come for the same reason they go to the original.

The architecture follows Izumo: a taisha-zukuri hall and, in front of the worship hall, an enormous straw shimenawa rope of the kind almost nowhere outside Shimane attempts. Coins are pushed up into its underside by visitors, which is technically discouraged and universally done. Clapping here is four times rather than the usual two, following Izumo practice. It is a strange thing to find on a national highway in Ibaraki and it is entirely sincere.

Informations essentielles

Horaires d'ouverture

8:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Extended over the New Year

Fermé: Open year-round

Tarif d'entrée

Free | Free parking

Meilleure saison

Year-round | Avoid the first three days of January unless you want the crowd

Durée de visite

45–60 minutes

Comment s'y rendre

Informations d'accès

Fukuhara, Kasama, on Route 50 about 1 km from Kasama-Nishi IC on the Kita-Kanto Expressway. Seven minutes on foot from Fukuhara Station on the JR Mito Line. Free to visit, with free parking for around 300 vehicles including coaches.

Guide d'initié

**Clap four times, not two.** Izumo practice is two bows, four claps, one bow, and this shrine follows it. Doing the usual two claps marks you out immediately. **The shimenawa is the thing to see.** The great straw rope in front of the worship hall is built in the Izumo manner and is on a scale you will not find elsewhere in eastern Japan. Stand under it and look up. **Free parking for 300, which tells you about New Year.** For most of the year the lot is nearly empty. Over the first three days of January it is not, and the gates keep different hours. **It is genuinely new, and that is interesting.** Almost every shrine a visitor sees claims a founding in the distant past; this one does not need to. **Add Kasama Inari.** The older and much larger Inari shrine is fifteen minutes away, and the contrast between a nationally famous Edo-period shrine and a thirty-year-old branch of a Shimane institution is worth the short drive.

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