Mefu Shrine (売布神社 (宝塚市))

Mefu Shrine sits on a wooded hill in Takarazuka, occupying 13,000 square meters of land that has been sacred ground since 610 CE. The shrine’s name—mefu, meaning “to sell cloth”—preserves the memory of an ancient marketplace where textiles were traded beneath these trees, when silk and hemp cloth functioned as currency in pre-coinage Japan. The deity enshrined here, Shimohateruhime no Mikoto, was a weaver goddess who taught the region’s women the art of cloth-making, transforming Takarazuka into a center of textile production that supplied imperial robes to the Yamato court. Today, the shrine remains a pilgrimage site for those in the textile and fashion industries, who come to pray before a deity whose craft became the economic foundation of an entire province.

Mefu Shrine was established in 610 CE during the reign of Empress Suiko, at a time when Japan was rapidly adopting Chinese administrative systems and textile production was becoming increasingly centralized. The shrine was built on a hill that had long served as a marketplace for cloth merchants traveling between Kyoto and the western provinces. According to shrine records, the location was chosen because Shimohateruhime no Mikoto was believed to have descended to this very hill to teach weaving techniques to the local population. The shrine became a guardian institution for the textile guilds that dominated Takarazuka’s economy throughout the Nara and Heian periods. During the Edo period, the shrine received patronage from the Kyoto merchant class, who donated vermilion torii gates and stone lanterns that still line the approach today.

Shimohateruhime no Mikoto (下照比売命) is the primary deity of Mefu Shrine, a goddess of weaving, textiles, and women’s work. She appears in the Kojiki as the daughter of Ōkuninushi, the great deity of Izumo, and is known for her radiant beauty and mastery of the loom. Her divine role encompasses not only the physical act of weaving but also the transformation of raw materials into objects of value—a process that made her the patron deity of merchants and artisans throughout the Kansai region. Her messenger is the silkworm moth, and offerings of silk thread are still made at the shrine during spring festivals.

The shrine’s founding legend tells of a terrible famine in the seventh century, when crops failed and the people of Takarazuka faced starvation. A village woman named Ayame dreamed of a radiant goddess who descended from the clouds carrying a loom and baskets of silk cocoons. The goddess taught Ayame to weave cloth so fine it could be traded for rice in distant markets. When Ayame woke, she found her hands stained with the juice of mulberry leaves—the food of silkworms—though no mulberry trees grew near her home. She gathered the women of the village and taught them what the goddess had shown her in the dream. Within a year, Takarazuka cloth was being sold in the capital, and the village prospered. The shrine was built on the hill where Ayame first saw the goddess, and a sacred mulberry tree—said to have sprouted from the original dream—still grows behind the main hall.

The shrine complex follows the Kasuga-zukuri architectural style, with a vermilion-lacquered main hall elevated on pillars and roofed with cypress bark. The approach passes through three torii gates donated by textile guilds in the 17th century, each inscribed with the names of merchant families whose fortunes were built on cloth. A stone monument near the haiden (worship hall) bears an inscription from 1654 commemorating a drought-relief ritual performed by shrine priests. The shrine’s treasure house contains a collection of historical textiles, including a fragment of silk said to have been woven by Shimohateruhime herself, though modern analysis dates it to the early Heian period. The grounds are planted with mulberry trees and Japanese wisteria, both plants associated with textile production.

• Nunobiki Matsuri (Cloth-Pulling Festival, May 5) — The shrine’s main annual festival, featuring a procession of women dressed in Heian-period robes carrying bolts of silk cloth through the neighborhood. The ritual commemorates Shimohateruhime’s teaching of weaving arts to the region’s ancestors.
• Hata Matsuri (Loom Festival, November 23) — A harvest thanksgiving ritual where textile workers bring offerings of thread and fabric to the shrine, and shrine maidens perform a ceremonial weaving demonstration using a traditional handloom kept in the shrine treasury.
• Hatsumode (New Year’s First Visit) — Particularly popular among fashion designers, seamstresses, and textile company employees who pray for skill and success in their craft during the coming year.

Late April to early May, when the wisteria arbors on the shrine grounds bloom in cascades of purple and white—a visual echo of the silk threads that made this shrine famous. The Nunobiki Matsuri on May 5 offers a rare opportunity to see traditional weaving rituals performed in their original context. Autumn brings spectacular foliage to the wooded hillside, and the November Hata Matsuri draws fewer crowds while offering a more intimate glimpse of the shrine’s living textile traditions. Weekday mornings are nearly deserted, allowing quiet contemplation in a place where economic activity and spiritual devotion were once inseparable.