Ontakesan Ontake Shimmeisha — 御嶽山御嶽神明社

In the Hanaizumi district of Ichinoseki, in the far south of Iwate, stands Ontakesan Ontake Shimmeisha — a shrine to the sun goddess whose worship was revived, after centuries of decline, through the mountain faith of distant Mount Ontake.

The shrine’s founding is reckoned to about 766. A record of 1772, the Tōge Fudoki, describes a Shinmeisha on this site enshrining the sun goddess and serving as the general prayer hall of the surrounding Hanaizumi district. The shrine fell into decline after the Meiji Restoration, but in 1906 Satō Yūzō revived it by enshrining a divided spirit brought from Mount Ontake. It took its present name after 1945, and the current hall was rebuilt in 1978. Within the grounds stand auxiliary shrines including an Inari and an ancestral hall.

The shrine enshrines Amaterasu, the sun goddess, worshipped here since its early days as a Shinmeisha. To her veneration was joined, in the twentieth-century revival, the mountain faith of Mount Ontake, whose divided spirit was enshrined to restore the shrine to life.

The shrine keeps a full ritual calendar: the New Year and Dontosai rites of January, the Setsubun star festival in February, the spring grand festival on the tenth day of the third lunar month, a summer purification, a biennial pilgrimage to Kiso’s Mount Ontake, and an autumn fire-walking goma rite on the tenth day of the ninth lunar month, closing with a winter-solstice festival. Monthly and kasshi-day observances run through the year.