Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu Shrine
Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu Shrine is on Mount Otoko at Yawata-shi, about 20 minutes by train southwest of Kyoto. In The Jeweled Chaplet chapter of The Tale of Genji, Lady Tamakazura is sent to the shrine to pray for assistance. |
|
The main shrine and inner
courtyard of the Iwashimizu Hachimangu shrine. |
Iwashimizu Hachiman-gu was the tutelary shrine of the Minamoto (Genji) clan, to which Genji belonged. Hachiman was the Shinto god of war and god of archery. |
|
Shrine maiden at Iwashimizu Hachimangu. |
The author of The Confessions of Lady Nijo also belonged to the Minamoto clan. In 1273, she visited the shrine to pray for her father's soul, and in 1291 - by then a nun - she visited again and ran into her former lover, Retired Emperor Go-Fukakusa. |
|
Stone lanterns line the
approach to the tutelary shrine of the Minamoto (Genji)
clan. |
|
Two arrows stand beside
this path to the shrine of the God of War. |
