I visited the Samukawa Shrine in Kanagawa prefecture the other week with my wife. We were returning an old talisman my wife had gotten me about 17 years ago. It is tradition to return them after a certain amount of time and my wife had been wanting to do so for a few years.
The Samukawa shrine has a long, and important history in the Kanto region. It is believed to have been founded between 456 - 479 during the reign of Emperor Yuryaku. People as high ranking as Minato no Yoritimo, the first Shogun of the Kamakura era, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamoto_no_Yoritomo have gone to worship there.
The shrine is located a few miles Northwest of Kamakura and Enoshima island, the latter being where we would end up later in the day.
The main entrance to the shrine is on the South side over an arched bridge with a large Torii gate.
There are also entrances just beyond this point on both the West and East sides.
As you make your way into the shrine grounds you become surrounded by a small, well kept forest & gardens. The path is lined with lanterns, something you often see at Shinto shrines.
Once past the gardens and the forest you enter into the first courtyard with the purification spring to your left and the administration buildings to your right.
Immediately to your right you may notice two boulders in the garden.
The boulder on the left is revered as "Sazare-Ishi" or conglomerate rock. These rocks are spoken about in the Japanese national anthem, "Sazare-ishi no Iwao to narite koke no musu made (Until the tiny pebbles grow into massive boulders lush with moss)". The anthem is based on a 1000 year old poem by an unknown author. Many Shinto shrines have these conglomerate boulders on their grounds.
Continuing on into the main courtyard.
This is the main shrine building that houses the Kami(gods). Behind this building there is a sacred spring that you must have an invitation to in order to see it.
If you will notice the two trees on the left. I didn't pay any attention to them when I was there, however a week later while at Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, I did pay attention.
The two trees represent male and female. At both shrines the male tree is on the left and the female tree on the right. I am not sure if they were pruned to grow that way or if they did naturally, but it was both spiritual and beautiful to see. I will write about Meiji shrine and it's trees in a future post.
Courtyard gates & buildings to the left and the right.
I vaguely remembered visiting Samukawa on a hot, summer day 17 years ago. At that time I wasn't able to fully appreciate the beauty of Japanese shrines. The simplicity and harmony with nature is something we lack in Christendom.
Immediately to the right of the main shrine building was this sculpture of the Happo-yoke, guardians of the 8 directions. They are meant to protect you from negativities, evils in life. It is the only shrine in Japan that offers prayers to them.
From this point we headed back to the building to dispose of my talisman. It is a special building built just to accept the returning talismans. It has no other use. It happened to have quite a few talismans from other people in it that day and was just to the left of the gate below.
From there we headed off to Enoshima!
This was stop number 1 of a day filled with amazing places we visited. Looking back on it, it has to be one of the best days I've had in Japan. I'm not sure how many stops will be in this series as I just started working on it, but there will be at least 3, possibly 5. Stay tuned because it was a spectacular, long day!
If you would like to know more about check out their amazing website, it's a work of art as well. http://samukawajinjya.jp/en/about/
