Love & Romance
Places associated with love and romance.
Places associated with love, from deities enshrined as a married couple to shrines that became known for a particular kind of prayer. Each page traces the association to the institution's own words or to a documented tradition, and shows how well grounded it is.
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Places in this collection
TempleKiyomizu-dera
- Career & Work
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
A Kannon temple begun in 778 beside the Otowa waterfall, venerated by those seeking health, advancement and a good match.
ShrineShimogamo Jinja
- Family & Home
- Fertility & Children
- Love & Romance
A shrine where people pray for protection, marriage, children, safe birth, raising a family and safe travel, in a wood that predates the city.
ShrineAtago Shrine
- Career & Work
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
A shrine on a steep hill in Minato, founded in 1603 on Tokugawa Ieyasu's order as a deity against fire, and known for the stone staircase named after a rider who is said to have galloped up it.
ShrineTokyo Daijingu
- Family & Home
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
A Chiyoda shrine founded in 1880 as a Tokyo branch of Ise, known as "Tokyo's O-Ise-sama" and visited above all for prayers about relationships, an association the shrine itself explains through the three deities of creation enshrined here.
ShrineAkasaka Hikawa Shrine
- Family & Home
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
A Minato shrine founded in 951 whose Edo-period buildings survived both the earthquake and the war, known for warding off misfortune and for the tying of bonds, and the shrine explains why it is known for each.
ShrineKifune Jinja
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
- Protection & Safety
A shrine to Kifune Okami, the deity governing the supply of water — and long famous as the shrine of love, with a subordinate shrine to a deity of matchmaking.
ShrineShiba Daijingu
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
- Protection & Safety
A Minato shrine founded in 1005 that enshrines the two deities of Ise, known in the Edo period as the Ise of the Kanto and today for a box charm sold nowhere else.
ShrineImado Shrine
- Love & Romance
- Bonds & Matchmaking
An Asakusa shrine founded in 1063 that calls itself a shrine of bond-tying, and which has run its own matchmaking gatherings since 2008.
ShrineHomangu Kamado Shrine
- Love & Romance
- Protection & Safety
Ritual began on Mount Homan because it stands at the demon gate of the Dazaifu government office, and the shrine derives its matchmaking virtue from the characters in its deity’s own name.
ShrineTooka Ebisu Shrine
- Family & Home
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
It began when a man walking home from Kashiigu and Hakozakigu picked an image of Ebisu up off the tide line, and a hall was built for it on the tenth day of the first month the following year.
ShrineKokura Gion Yasaka Shrine
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
- Protection & Safety
Founded in 1617 by Hosokawa Tadaoki and honoured as the guardian shrine of the whole province of Buzen, it stands within the grounds of Kokura Castle.
ShrineMomiji Hachimangu
- Career & Work
- Fertility & Children
- Love & Romance
Twelve deities are enshrined here, among them Empress Jingu, Emperor Ojin and Prince Uji no Wakiiratsuko, and the devotion runs to safe birth, the keeping of children, warding off misfortune, bonds and advancement.
ShrineShinozaki Hachiman Shrine
- Career & Work
- Fertility & Children
- Love & Romance
It begins with Empress Jingu giving birth to Emperor Ojin at Umi, and a division of the deity was brought from Usa Hachimangu in 730; two stones in the precinct carry different prayers.
ShrineNishino Jinja
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
Begins with five settler households who crossed to Hokkaido in 1885 holding the guardian deity of the place they had left, and states safe childbirth, good matches, warding off misfortune and rising fortune as its benefits.
ShrineTaga Shrine
- Fertility & Children
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
A shrine to Izanagi and Izanami, the married pair who made the land and bore the eight million deities, where prayers run from long life to safety on a worksite.
ShrineTsuyu no Tenjinsha
- Exams & Study
- Health & Healing
- Love & Romance
An old shrine of thirteen centuries whose grove was the scene of the double suicide behind Chikamatsu’s play, and where people now come to ask for love to come true.
ShrineYuki Jinja
- Fertility & Children
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
Once kept inside the imperial palace as a guardian of the court, and the shrine whose fire festival re-enacts the night its deity was moved to Kurama.
TempleShoman-in Aizendo
- Love & Romance
- Money & Prosperity
- Bonds & Matchmaking
Founded by Prince Shotoku in 593 on the site of his dispensary — called the birthplace of welfare work — and known for the binding of ties and harmony between husband and wife.
ShrineJishu Jinja
- Love & Romance
A shrine to Okuninushi, the deity of matchmaking — currently closed for restoration of its buildings and grounds.