Sumiyoshi Shrine Audio Guide

Sumiyoshi Shrine: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Sumiyoshi Shrine

   Welcome to Sumiyoshi Shrine, known in Japanese as 住吉神社. It stands in the Sumiyoshi neighborhood of Hakata Ward in Fukuoka, in Fukuoka Prefecture. This is a Shinto shrine with a very big claim to fame. It is the ichinomiya of the old Chikuzen Province, which means it was ranked as the foremost shrine of that province. The shrine is devoted to the gods who protect sailors and ships. Long ago the land here was a cape at the mouth of the Naka River, looking out over Hakata Bay. Keep that picture in mind as you walk: a headland, a river, and the open water beyond, which is exactly the sort of place where people once asked the sea for a safe passage. Over the next few minutes we will look at the gods enshrined here and why this place is considered a starting point for Sumiyoshi shrines across the country. We will also cover the building style of the main hall, the wars and the priestly family that shaped the shrine's fortunes, and a few details from the grounds. The main festival is held every year on October 13.

2. 02

   The Sea Gods of Sumiyoshi Shrine

   The gods enshrined here are the three Sumiyoshi deities: Sokotsutsu-no-o, Nakatsutsu-no-o and Uwatsutsu-no-o. The shrine is also listed in the Engishiki, the great tenth-century register of shrines, which tells you it was already of national standing in ancient times. These gods are worshipped for safe voyages and the protection of ships. Their origin story comes from Japan's oldest chronicles, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki. After the god Izanagi returned from the land of the dead, he purified himself by the water at a place in Tsukushi. The three Sumiyoshi gods were born in that cleansing, together with the three sea gods known as the Watatsumi. Later, in the tale of Empress Jingu's expedition to Korea, the Sumiyoshi god spoke through the empress and helped the campaign succeed. This is where the shrine's big claim comes in. Over 2,300 Sumiyoshi shrines exist across Japan, and the grand shrine in Osaka is usually treated as the head shrine. But an old Osaka text, the Sumiyoshi Taisha Jindaiki, names a great deity of Tsukushi as the source of the Sumiyoshi worship, and that points to this very region. So some people regard this shrine as the origin of them all. It is also counted among the Three Great Sumiyoshi shrines, alongside the ones in Osaka and in Shimonoseki.

3. 03

   The Main Hall of Sumiyoshi Shrine

   The main hall of Sumiyoshi Shrine was rebuilt in 1623, in the Genna era, and it is a Nationally Important Cultural Property. Its builder was Kuroda Nagamasa, the first lord of the Fukuoka domain, who restored the shrine in that year. If you look at the roof, you will notice how straight and clean its lines are. That simplicity is the point. The hall is built in the style called Sumiyoshi-zukuri, and like the Shinmei and Taisha styles, it does not use the bracket sets that sit atop the pillars in temple architecture to support the eaves. Those brackets came with Buddhist building traditions from the continent, so their absence is taken as a sign that the form preserves Japan's ancient architecture from before that influence arrived. Here is a nice trick of the eye. The hall measures four bays across and two deep, yet it looks like three bays from the front. The gabled entrance sits in the middle of the front wall, and there is no pillar in the exact center. Pillars stand instead on either side of the doors, so your eye reads the front as three bays. Take a moment to compare that façade with the way you might expect a temple hall to look.

4. 04

   Poets, Priests and War at Sumiyoshi Shrine

   Sumiyoshi Shrine has a history that is both poetic and turbulent. It has long been revered as a god of waka poetry as well as of the sea. In 1480 the renga master Sogi visited, and in his travel record, the Tsukushi Doki, he wrote about how war had left the shrine devastated. The Sengoku period was harsh to its archives. The shrine's records and old documents were carried off to Yamaguchi by Ouchi Yoshitaka, and they were destroyed in the Taineiji incident of 1551. That loss is one reason why so much of the early story is told through chronicles and traditions rather than through the shrine's own papers. The priestly family has a dramatic tale too. The Saeki family, who served as head priests, were driven out to Izu by the Taira regime. There they became prayer priests to Minamoto no Yoritomo, and they went on to serve as shrine officials who were also retainers of the shogunate. Some accounts add that a major Buddhist temple once stood within these grounds, which is why Buddhist architectural elements were added to the shrine over the centuries.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   As you wander the grounds of Sumiyoshi Shrine, try to picture the old shoreline: a cape at the river mouth, with Hakata Bay opening beyond it. Then look again at the main hall and its plain, straight roofline, and ask yourself what ancient builders were choosing to keep. There is more to notice. The shrine also holds six bronze dagger-axes and five bronze spearheads, which are designated as prefectural cultural properties. And the grounds have a Noh stage story that begins in the 1930s, when Noh circles proposed a new stage here after the one at Kego Shrine in central Fukuoka had grown too old for performances. If you are here around October 13, keep in mind that this is the date of the shrine's main festival. Whenever you visit, the shrine's two big questions are still open to you: whether it truly is the first of all the Sumiyoshi shrines, and how much of its ancient spirit you can feel in the quiet around its oldest buildings.