Ono Shrine — 小野神社 (多摩市)

Ono Shrine sits in western Tokyo’s Tama City, claiming a title it has contested for over a millennium: ichinomiya of Musashi Province, the highest-ranked shrine in what was once the region encompassing modern Tokyo, Saitama, and parts of Kanagawa. Its rival, Hikawa Shrine in Saitama, makes the same claim. The dispute has never been resolved, and both shrines continue to assert primacy over the ancient province. What distinguishes Ono is its quietness—it receives a fraction of Hikawa’s visitors, and the forest that surrounds it has grown thick enough to muffle the sound of the Keio Line trains that pass nearby. The shrine’s silence is strategic: its kami is a deity of water, and the site was chosen for its proximity to springs that once fed the Tama River watershed.

Ono Shrine’s founding is traditionally dated to the reign of Emperor Antoku in the late Heian period, though local records suggest worship at the site predates formal construction by several centuries. The shrine was established to enshrine Amenoshita Harau Ono no Mikoto, a deity associated with agricultural water management and the purification of land for cultivation. During the Kamakura period, the shrine gained prominence as Musashi Province’s political center shifted westward, and by the Muromachi era, it was widely recognized as the province’s ichinomiya. The Tokugawa shogunate granted the shrine land and stipends, reinforcing its status. After the Meiji Restoration, when the province system was abolished, the ichinomiya title became ceremonial rather than administrative, but Ono Shrine has maintained its claim through continuous ritual practice and the preservation of ancient land records that predate Hikawa’s similar documentation.

Amenoshita Harau Ono no Mikoto (天下春命) is the primary deity, a kami whose name translates roughly as “the deity who brings spring beneath heaven.” This is not a reference to the season but to the emergence of water from underground—springs that rise and transform barren land into arable fields. The kami is associated with irrigation, land reclamation, and the purification of water sources. Unusually, Ono no Mikoto does not appear in the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki; the deity is a product of local Musashi mythology, suggesting that the shrine preserves a strand of indigenous belief that predates the codification of imperial myth. Secondary kami enshrined here include Susanoo no Mikoto, added during the Edo period to strengthen the shrine’s association with purification and storm control.

The Spring That Chose Its Protector: According to shrine tradition, Ono no Mikoto did not arrive at the site through imperial decree but was discovered there. In the 8th century, villagers clearing forest for rice cultivation found a spring flowing from a rock formation. The water was exceptionally pure and never ran dry, even in drought. When they attempted to dig channels to redirect the flow, tools broke and workers fell ill. A wandering yamabushi (mountain ascetic) told them the spring was inhabited by a kami who required formal recognition. A shrine was built on the spot, and the kami revealed its name in a dream to the village headman: Amenoshita Harau Ono no Mikoto. The original spring still flows beneath the shrine’s main hall, accessed through a small door in the floor that is opened once annually during the summer purification rite.

The shrine’s honden (main hall) is a modest structure built in the nagare-zukuri style, with a gently sloping roof that extends forward to shelter the front steps. It was reconstructed in 1964 after fire destroyed the Edo-period building, but the design replicates the original proportions. The haiden (worship hall) is separated from the honden by a stone courtyard planted with sakaki trees, and the approach is lined with 17th-century stone lanterns donated by local farming families. The shrine’s most distinctive feature is the Sui-mon (Water Gate), a small stone archway set into the hillside behind the main hall. Water from the original spring flows through a carved channel beneath the gate, and visitors traditionally cup their hands under the flow before approaching the altar. The surrounding forest is designated a protected area by Tama City, and includes several cedar trees estimated to be over 400 years old.

• Reitaisai (Annual Grand Festival, September 15) — The shrine’s most important event, featuring processions of mikoshi (portable shrines) through Tama City and ritual offerings of first-harvest rice at the honden.
• Minazuki no Harae (Summer Purification Rite, June 30) — A ceremony in which the floor door of the main hall is opened and participants descend to receive water directly from the underground spring, believed to cleanse illness and bad fortune.
• Ichinomiya Saiten (Provincial Primacy Festival, May 5) — A rite unique to Ono Shrine, in which priests read aloud the shrine’s historical claim to ichinomiya status and renew petitions to the kami for protection of the former Musashi territory.

Late April, when the shrine’s hillside is covered in yamabuki (yellow mountain rose) blossoms, which have been naturalized around the spring channel for over 300 years. The flowers bloom in cascading waves down the slope, and the combination of yellow petals and flowing water creates a scene that appears frequently in Edo-period poetry about Musashi Province. The shrine is also quiet during weekday mornings in early autumn, when the forest canopy filters sunlight into soft columns and the only sound is water moving through stone.