Tokyo
Tokyo holds shrines and temples that predate the city itself, and others founded to guard a castle that no longer stands. Every place on this site is currently in the Tokyo metropolis, from the Nihonbashi merchant shrines to a mountain temple an hour and a half west.
AI-assisted research. Check official sources before you travel.About
33 placesOpen in the full map
Places in this collection
ShrineMeiji Jingu
- Health & Healing
- Protection & Safety
- Bonds & Matchmaking
A 1920 Shinto shrine in central Tokyo enshrining Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken, set in a 70-hectare forest that was planted from scratch and is visited today for prayers about bonds, protection and health.
TempleSenso-ji
- Money & Prosperity
- Protection & Safety
Tokyo's oldest temple, in Asakusa, built around a statue of Kannon that two fishermen brothers are said to have pulled from the river in 628, and visited today for prayers about money and protection.
ShrineKanda Myojin
- Career & Work
- Family & Home
- Money & Prosperity
A Chiyoda shrine that served as the guardian shrine of all Edo, enshrining three deities between them associated with business prosperity, good matches and warding off misfortune, and these days selling a charm for information security.
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.
ShrineYushima Tenmangu
- Exams & Study
A Bunkyo shrine enshrining Sugawara no Michizane, where Tokyo students come to pray before examinations, and whose plum garden opens each February.
ShrineHie Shrine
- Career & Work
- Fertility & Children
- Money & Prosperity
A shrine on a wooded rise in Nagatacho, once the guardian of Edo Castle, whose messenger is the monkey, a pun the shrine explains itself, connecting it to warding off evil, to winning, and to the tying of bonds.
ShrineNezu Shrine
- Career & Work
- Exams & Study
- Family & Home
A Bunkyo shrine whose entire 1706 complex survives intact as an Important Cultural Property, rare in Tokyo, with an azalea hill and a tunnel of small red torii (鳥居).
TempleGotoku-ji
- Money & Prosperity
- Bonds & Matchmaking
A Sōtō Zen temple in Setagaya where thousands of white beckoning-cat figurines are left by visitors, and where the temple is careful to say the cat brings connections, not fortune.
TempleZojo-ji
- Career & Work
- Family & Home
- Money & Prosperity
A Pure Land temple in Shiba, founded in 1393 and chosen by the Tokugawa as their family temple, whose hidden principal image is known as the Black Honzon of victory.
ShrineKameido Tenjin Shrine
- Exams & Study
A Koto shrine laid out in 1662 on the model of Dazaifu Tenmangu, head of Tenjin devotion in eastern Japan, and the best place in Tokyo to see wisteria.