Motonosumi Shrine
Interesting facts
- Unusually for a Japanese shrine, Motonosumi is private property of the founding Okamura family rather than a religious corporation.
- Because it belongs to no shrine association, the shrine could rename itself freely; the new name was reportedly chosen in 2018 by drawing an omikuji fortune slip.
- The old name wrote Inari with uncommon characters meaning rice becoming, a spelling shared with a shrine in Tsuwano to which it is unrelated.
- The offertory box on the great torii is nicknamed the hardest in Japan to throw a coin into.
- Its Dragon Palace blowhole is named after Ryลซgลซ-jล, the undersea palace of the sea god in Japanese folklore.
- After the CNN listing, visitor numbers rose sharply, and the shorter name adopted in 2019 was meant partly to be easier for foreign visitors.
- Worshippers come to pray for good catches and safety at sea as well as for business success and family blessings.
Why it is worth it
Motonosumi Shrine is a line of vermilion running down a green headland to the sea. One hundred and twenty-three torii gates, set close together, form a tunnel more than a hundred metres long that winds across the grassy cliff top in Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, towards the rocks and the deep blue water below. Seen from above, the red gates against the green slope and the ocean make one of the most graphic compositions on the Japanese coast, and it was this view that put a small local shrine on CNN's 2015 list of the most beautiful places in Japan.
The shrine is young by Japanese standards. Local tradition holds that in 1955 a white fox appeared at the bedside of Okamura Isao, a fisherman and net master of the area, and asked to be enshrined here; the shrine he founded is dedicated to Inari, together with Izanami. The tunnel of torii came later, the gates donated one by one by worshippers between 1987 and 1997. In 2019 the name was shortened from Motonosumi Inari Shrine to Motonosumi Shrine.
Below the cliffs the sea has cut caves into the rock, and one of them, the Ryลซgลซ no Shiofuki โ "the sea-spray of the Dragon Palace" โ acts as a blowhole: in rough weather the waves force water up through the rock in tall bursts of spray, close to the lower end of the torii. At the top, the large main torii carries an offertory box about five metres above the ground. Visitors try to toss coins into it, and it is said that a wish is granted to whoever succeeds โ a playful twist on the usual ritual that draws as much laughter as devotion.
The beauty here lies in the setting more than in the buildings: a simple shrine, a ribbon of red and the sea opening wide beyond the headland. A calm, clear day shows the colours best; a stormy one brings the blowhole to life.
Getting there
The shrine stands on the coast of Nagato in Yamaguchi Prefecture, about 13 km from the centre of the city. The nearest airports are Yamaguchi Ube (UBJ), about 58 km away, and Hagi-Iwami, roughly two hours' drive. The nearest railway station is Nagato-Furuichi, about 20 minutes away by taxi; from the Akiyoshi interchange of the expressway the drive takes about an hour.
On these lists
34.41989, 131.06278per Wikidata