Quite an impressive gate here, eh?
Well, kind of normal, actually. We've seen this style of gate before. (In my post about Ieyasu's family shrine). The clouds do a lot to add to the effect here.
The lotuses I posted photos about here are right in front of this gate. If I had turned around, I would have been facing them.
The name of the shrine is Iga Hachiman and it is dedicated to the war god, Hachiman.[1] It's one of the bigger shrines in Okazaki and features some pretty impressive architecture, such as you can see with this gate.
Back in the day, armies would come here to pray for victory before going off to battle. There is a relative famous story about this. Well, famous in Okazaki anyway.
Story Time
Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who would go on to conquer Japan and be named Shogun in 1603, also brought his men here before battle, as was the thing to do, as I mentioned before.
On one particular occasion, he had his men camp out around the shrine, promising them that Hachiman himself would assure their victory and that he would give them a sign of this victory to come.
That night, a group of ninja hired by Ieyasu sneaked in, dug up the shrine torii gate (a large gate several yards opposite this gate), and moved it a few feet. When the men woke the next morning they had their sign from the god! Victory was theirs! Full of confidence they marched on to their battle, where they did in fact win.
Clever guy, that Ieyasu. No wonder he went on to greater things.
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 | David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
Hachiman-shin or Yawata no kami. It was thought that legendary Emperor Ōjin (i.e., probably not a real guy, but traditionally given the ruling dates of 270 to 310) was an incarnation of Hachiman. Emperor Ōjin happened to be an ancestor of the Minamoto family, the family that started the first Shogunate and which all subsequent Shoguns had to prove relation. Therefore worship of Hachiman was extremely common among samurai and shrines dedicated to him became the second most popular shrine, after Inari. He is also known as Hachiman Daibosatsu. ↩