Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine

Quick facts

Address

1-1-24 Sendagaya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 151-0051

Access

Sendagaya on the JR Chuo-Sobu line, Kokuritsu-Kyogijo on the Toei Oedo line and Kita-Sando on the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin line are each about five minutes away on foot.

Hours

The office receives visitors from 9:00 to 17:00 every day of the year, and prayers are performed between 9:00 and 16:00. The Fuji mound can be climbed at any time except during rites and maintenance.

Best time

The shogi rite on 5 January, and 3 June, when priests and worshippers climb the Fuji mound together after the Sengen rite. The main festival falls in September.

Spiritual entities

Empress Jingu (神功皇后) · Hachiman (八幡神)

Official site

www.hatonomori-shrine.or.jp

About this place

Hatonomori Hachiman stands in Sendagaya, five minutes from three different stations and from the national stadium. Its name means dove wood, after the birds in its founding story. Two things in the grounds are unusual enough to be worth the trip on their own: a miniature Fuji raised in 1789 that you can still climb, and a hexagonal hall holding a large wooden shogi piece, built by the shrine together with the Japan Shogi Association.

Origin and history

The shrine tells its beginning as weather. Long ago, auspicious cloud kept appearing deep in the wood that stood here. One day cloud came down out of a clear sky, and villagers who went in to see what it was found a great many white doves, which rose and flew off together to the west. They built a small shrine on the spot and called the place Hatonomori, the dove wood.

In 860 the monk Ennin, known as Jikaku Daishi, passed through on a teaching circuit of the eastern provinces. At the villagers' insistence he made images of Empress Jingu, Emperor Ojin and the Kasuga deity to set here, and from then the place was revered as a Hachiman shrine. The two deities enshrined today are Ojin and his mother Jingu.

The rest of the grounds arrived over the centuries and mostly from somewhere else. The Fuji mound was raised in 1789. The Koga Inari, revered by the Koga unit in the Edo period, stood at Gondawara in Aoyama until 1885, when the army built its parade ground there and the shrine was moved to this precinct; it burned in the war and was rebuilt in zelkova in 1970. The Shinmei-sha, enshrined in the early Edo period against epidemics in the east, was brought in as a subsidiary shrine in November 1908. The Shogi Hall is the newest of them, from 1986.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  The doves the place is named for

  Villagers went into the wood to see why cloud had come down out of a clear sky, and a great many white doves flew up and away to the west. They built a shrine where it happened.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  A Fuji you can climb in a few minutes

  The mound was raised in 1789 with lava from the mountain set near its summit, and designated a tangible folk cultural property by the metropolis in 1981. It is open to climb in daylight.

  documented history

• Power spotSkill & Mastery

  A hall built with the Japan Shogi Association

  It holds a zelkova shogi piece over a metre tall, dedicated in 1986 by Yasuharu Oyama, then the association's president. Players come to dedicate tablets asking to get better.

  documented history

• Origin

  A shrine the army displaced

  The Koga Inari stood in Aoyama until 1885, when the parade ground went up on its site and it was moved here. It burned in the war and was rebuilt in 1970.

  documented history

One tag on this page, skill, and this shrine is a large part of why the category exists on this site.

The shrine performs the usual range of prayers, from warding to safe travel to passing an examination, and that list is a service menu rather than a statement about what this particular place is for. It gets no tags here. What does is the Shogi Hall.

The hall is a small hexagonal building the shrine put up jointly with the Japan Shogi Association. Inside it stands a zelkova shogi piece a metre and twenty centimetres tall, dedicated in 1986 by Yasuharu Oyama, fifteenth lifetime Meijin, who was then the association's president. It sits on a granite board with Hachiman enshrined behind it. Every January the shrine holds a rite in front of the hall, which is otherwise closed, and the association's president and professional players attend; the shrine says the prayer is for the development of the shogi world and for players to get stronger. Visitors dedicate tablets asking the same thing. In the shrine's own words the hall is a guardian for people trying to improve at shogi and a symbol of prayer for the game's prosperity.

That is the skill tag: mastery of a discipline, asked for at the place that guards it. For the professionals who come in January the game is also the career, but the shrine is talking about the game.

The other reason to come is the Fuji mound, and it is a different kind of thing entirely. Edo had a fashion for building miniature Fujis so that people who could not make the pilgrimage could climb one anyway. This one was raised in 1789: earth heaped into a round mound with lava carried from the mountain set near the top, round stones placed along the way, the Sengen shrine's inner hall at the summit and its lower hall at the foot. At the seventh station there is a cave holding an image of Jikigyo Miroku, the ascetic whose death on the mountain in 1733 shaped the Fuji confraternities. The metropolis designated it a tangible folk cultural property in 1981. On 3 June, after the Sengen rite, the priests and the congregation climb it together chanting for purification of the six senses.

Visiting tips

The general form is in the visiting guide below. Specific to Hatonomori:

Bare feet are not allowed in the hall where prayers are performed. The shrine states this plainly and asks for socks or stockings.

Prayers are performed for one party at a time and never combined with another group, so without a booking you may not get the hour you want.

The Fuji mound is open to climb whenever the grounds are, but it closes during rites and maintenance, and the shrine asks people to come in daylight because the path is dark and unsafe after dusk. It is a real if short climb on uneven stone.

The Shogi Hall is normally shut, and opens for the January rite.

Related guides

• How to visit a shrine or temple in JapanThe country-wide basics: purifying at the water basin, the two-bows-two-claps-one-bow form at shrines, and what temples do instead.
• What a "power spot" actually isA modern Japanese coinage, not a traditional religious category. Where the word came from, what it does and does not claim, and why this site uses it anyway.
• Shrine or temple?A shrine is Shinto and a temple is Buddhist, and you can usually tell at the gate. Why the line is cleaner on paper than on the ground, and what a government order in 1868 has to do with it.
• Omamori, ema, omikuji and goshuinThe four things you are most likely to receive, write, draw or be given at a shrine or temple, what each is actually for, and the one of them people most often get wrong.

Sources

1. History and main hall (由緒・御社殿) — Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
2. The Fuji mound (冨士塚) — Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
3. The Shogi Hall (将棋堂) — Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
4. Subsidiary shrines (末社) — Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
5. Prayers for individuals (ご祈祷個人) — Hatonomori Hachiman Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)