Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja

Quick facts

Address

1-1-1 Higashiishikiricho, Higashiosaka, Osaka

About this place

Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja is in Higashiosaka. It enshrines two deities, father and son: Nigihayahi, a grandson of Amaterasu, and his child Umashimade. The shrine name — "stone-cutting sword and arrow" — expresses how great the enshrined deities’ power is, great enough to split and pierce even solid rock. The ten sacred treasures are transmitted to have healed illness and even restored lives that had been lost, and the shrine is known as the deity who cures growths and swellings. As descendants of the Mononobe, its deities also govern making, on the principle that a spirit dwells in things made. The kaji prayers and the hundred-times pilgrimage are especially well known, drawing people from across Kansai and from all over the country.

Origin and history

This shrine enshrines two deities, father and son: Nigihayahi, a grandson of Amaterasu, and his child Umashimade.

In the year after the enthronement of Emperor Jimmu, Umashimade, setting out to pacify the Izumo region, enshrined Nigihayahi at Miyayama where he had been born and raised. This is transmitted as the origin of Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja.

The shrine name, "stone-cutting sword and arrow", expresses how great the enshrined deities’ power is — great enough to split and pierce even solid rock.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & Healing

  The deity for growths

  The ten sacred treasures are transmitted to have healed illness and restored lost lives, and the shrine is known as the deity who cures growths and swellings.

  folk tradition

• Power spotSkill & Mastery

  Deity of making

  As descendants of the Mononobe, the deities govern the making of things, on the principle that a spirit dwells in what is made.

  documented history

• What people do here

  Kaji prayers and the hundred-times pilgrimage

  The kaji prayers and the hundred-times pilgrimage are especially well known, drawing people from across Kansai and the whole country.

  documented history

• Origin

  Father and son at Miyayama

  In the year after Emperor Jimmu’s enthronement, Umashimade enshrined Nigihayahi at Miyayama, where he had been born and raised.

  folk tradition

This shrine explains its own name. Stone-cutting sword and arrow: the name, it records, expresses a divine power great enough to split and pierce even solid rock. The name is a description of what the deity does.

From there to healing is one continuous line. The ten sacred treasures are transmitted to have healed illness and even restored lives that had been lost, and the shrine is known as the deity who cures growths and swellings. What cuts through rock cuts through what grows on a body.

Its other face is making. As descendants of the Mononobe, the deities govern the making of things, on the principle that a spirit dwells in what is made.

Even the way of visiting has a name. The kaji prayers and the hundred-times pilgrimage are especially well known, and people come for them from across Kansai and beyond.

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. 御由緒・御祭神 — Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja (accessed 2026-08-14)
2. 石切劔箭神社 — Ishikiri Tsurugiya Jinja (accessed 2026-08-14)