Kumano Nachi Taisha โ€” Shinto shrine
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Kumano Nachi Taisha

  • 2 min read
  • 33.669ยฐ N 135.890ยฐ E

Interesting facts

  • Unlike the other two Kumano shrines, Nachi honours thirteen deities rather than twelve, the extra one being the spirit of the waterfall itself.
  • The shrine's original halls stood at the foot of the falls; tradition holds that they were moved up to the present mountainside site in 317.
  • The chief deity, Kumano Fusumi no Okami, is usually identified with Izanami, the creator goddess of Japanese mythology.
  • Six main sanctuaries stand in a row behind the worship hall, and the fourth, dedicated to Fusumi, is the largest of them.
  • A small shrine in the precinct honours Yatagarasu, the three-legged crow; according to legend, after guiding Emperor Jimmu it turned into the Crow Stone that lies nearby.
  • Retired emperors were devoted pilgrims: Go-Shirakawa is recorded as making the Kumano pilgrimage 34 times and Go-Toba 31 times.
  • When Meiji-era laws forced Shinto and Buddhism apart, the other Kumano shrines lost all their Buddhist halls, but Nachi's Kannon hall survived because it opened the Saigoku pilgrimage.
  • The sacred camphor tree is hollow at the base, and visitors can pass through its trunk in a womb-passage rite, emerging above ground level.
  • In 1918 a buried sutra mound at the base of the falls yielded statues, bronze mirrors and sutra cases, hidden partly in fear that the world was ending.
  • The Nachi Falls are about 13 metres wide and are only the first of the Nachi Forty-Eight Falls, a chain of cascades used for ascetic mountain training.

Why it is worth it

Kumano Nachi Taisha sits high on a forested mountainside above the Pacific coast of the Kii Peninsula, and everything about it is arranged around water. A short walk below the vermilion halls, the Nachi Falls drop 133 metres in a single white ribbon down a dark cliff, the tallest single-drop waterfall in Japan. Long before any building stood here, the fall itself was worshipped as the dwelling of a god, and it is still venerated today at the Hiryu Shrine at its foot.

The shrine is one of the Kumano Sanzan, the three grand shrines of Kumano, together with Kumano Hongu Taisha and Kumano Hayatama Taisha. For centuries emperors, aristocrats and commoners walked the mountain routes of the Kumano Kodo to complete the circuit of all three, and since 2004 the shrines and the trails between them have been inscribed together as the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range. Nachi is also one of the clearest surviving examples of shinbutsu-shugo, the old fusion of Shinto and Buddhism: next door stands the Buddhist temple of Seiganto-ji, and its three-storied pagoda, about 25 metres high and painted in the same vermilion, frames the waterfall in one of the most celebrated views in Japan.

The approach is part of the experience. The Daimon-zaka, a stone-paved staircase of 267 steps running for some 600 metres through towering cedars, climbs towards the shrine along a stretch of the old pilgrim road. In the precinct, look for the great camphor tree, said to be around 850 years old and by tradition planted by Taira no Shigemori in the 12th century.

Every year on 14 July the Nachi Fire Festival brings the mountain to life: portable shrines some six metres tall are carried down towards the falls and purified with great flaming torches, a spectacle of fire and water in the cedar shade.

Getting there

The shrine lies about 11 km from the coastal city of Shingu, in Nachikatsuura in Wakayama Prefecture. Nanki-Shirahama Airport (SHM) is about 49 km away. The usual approach by public transport is from Kii-Katsuura Station: local buses take around 30 minutes to the Nachi-san stop below the shrine, also stopping at the Daimon-zaka trailhead and at the waterfall, so the steps can be walked on the way up.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Wakayama Prefecture 5The Most Beautiful Places in Japan 122The Most Beautiful Shinto Shrines 11The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Japan 32The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

Kumano Nachi Taisha (็†Š้‡Ž้‚ฃๆ™บๅคง็คพ) is a Shinto shrine and part of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range of Japan. The Kumano Kodล route connects it to other sites under the same classification, which are primarily located in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan. The four sites on the route, classified as pilgrimage destinations and World Heritage Sites, are: 1) Nachi Taisha; 2) Hongลซ Taisha; 3) Hayatama Taisha; 4) Koya-san.

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