Hebikubo Shrine — 蛇窪神社

Hebikubo Shrine sits in a quiet residential corner of Shinagawa, a few minutes from Nakanobu Station, and is known across Tokyo as shirohebi-sama — the White Snake Shrine. Its formal name is Kamishinmei Tenso Jinja (上神明天祖神社), but in 2019, marking the start of the Reiwa era, the shrine officially adopted “Hebikubo Jinja” as its public name to reflect the white-snake folklore that had drawn visitors to the grounds for centuries. Worshippers come for prosperity, healing, and protection, and on every tsuchinoto-mi (己巳) day in the calendar — the snake-of-earth day, considered the most auspicious for praying to Benzaiten — the shrine fills with quiet lines of people seeking the snake’s favor.

The shrine traces its origins to 1322 (Genkō 2), when a monk from Gonshō-ji Temple is said to have prayed to a dragon deity at a local pond during a long drought. Rain followed soon after, and the villagers built a shrine on the site in gratitude. Shrine tradition also reaches further back to 1271 (Bunei 8), when Tokichiyo, the fifth son of the Kamakura statesman Hōjō Shigetoki, took Buddhist orders under the name Hōen Shōnin and is associated with the early lineage of the area’s worship. The original wooden structures were destroyed in the air raids of World War II and rebuilt in 1961, with a major restoration of the precincts completed in 2022. The renaming to Hebikubo Jinja in 2019 was less a break with the past than a formal acknowledgment of how the shrine had always been known by its neighbours.

The main hall enshrines three deities. Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess and ancestral kami of the imperial line, is the principal deity. Ame-no-Koyane-no-Mikoto, the kami of ritual and prayer, is venerated as a guardian of correct worship and ceremonial speech. Hondawake-no-Mikoto — the deified Emperor Ōjin — is enshrined as a kami of military success, learning, and protection of the people. Within the precincts, three sub-shrines hold the figures most closely tied to the site’s folk identity: Shirohebi Benzaiten Sha (白蛇弁財天社), dedicated to the white snake as a manifestation of Benzaiten, goddess of water, music, and wealth; Hebikubo Ryūjin Sha (蛇窪龍神社), enshrining the dragon kami who answered the founding drought-prayer; and Hōmitsu Inari Sha (法密稲荷社), the resident Inari shrine for prosperity and household trade.

The shrine’s most loved story is that of the white snake of the spring. According to local tradition, a white serpent once lived in the spring at the edge of the grounds, and was treated as a divine messenger by the villagers. During a period when the shrine fell into disrepair, the snake is said to have left the precincts and made its home in nearby Togoshi Park. Generations later, during a violent storm, the white snake returned to its original spring at the shrine, and the villagers took this as a sign that the kami had come home. From that moment the white snake was venerated openly as shirohebi-sama, and the shrine became known for granting wishes related to prosperity, healing, fertility, and protection from misfortune. The snake’s image — coiled, white-scaled, with a slight smile — is the visual signature of the shrine today, appearing on its omamori, ema, and pilgrimage stamps.

The grounds are compact compared with Tokyo’s great urban shrines, designed to be walked slowly rather than processed through. The main worship hall (haiden) sits at the back of a short approach lined with stone lanterns, with the three sub-shrines arranged within the same enclosure so that a visitor can pay respects to all of them in a single circuit. The Shirohebi Benzaiten Sha is marked by a small pond and a coiled white-snake statue at which visitors leave offerings of eggs — the traditional food of serpents in Japanese folk religion. A purification basin (chōzuya) at the entrance, an Inari corridor of small vermilion torii leading to Hōmitsu Inari, and several stone snake reliefs set into the precinct walls give the shrine its distinctive visual identity. The 2022 restoration refreshed the roofs and woodwork without altering the layout.

• Hatsu-mi Sai (初巳祭, January) — the first mi (snake) day of the new year is the shrine’s most important Benzaiten festival, when visitors make their first prayers of the year to shirohebi-sama for prosperity and protection.
• Setsubun (節分, early February) — bean-throwing rite to drive out misfortune at the turn of the lunar season.
• Hebikubo Ryūjin Sai (蛇窪龍神祭, July) — dragon-kami festival commemorating the founding rain-prayer of 1322.
• Reitaisai (例大祭, September) — the shrine’s grand annual festival, with formal offerings and neighbourhood processions.
• Tsuchinoto-mi no Hi (己巳の日) — every recurrence of the earth-snake day in the sexagenary calendar (about every 60 days) is treated as an auspicious day for prayers to Benzaiten; many visitors plan trips to the shrine specifically around these dates.

The shrine is busiest on tsuchinoto-mi days and in the first week of January, when worshippers come for the Hatsu-mi Sai. For a quieter visit, weekday mornings are best — the small grounds let two or three visitors fill the approach, and on a slow day a person can pray, draw a fortune, and circle each of the three sub-shrines without interruption. The Year of the Snake — most recently 2025 — concentrates pilgrims here from across Japan, and visiting in the early months of any snake year requires patience with crowds. Spring, with the precinct’s small plum and cherry blossom, and the autumn weeks around Reitaisai, offer the most photographic visits.