Kego Shrine

Quick facts

Address

2-2-20 Tenjin, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka

About this place

Kego Shrine is in Tenjin, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka. In the ninth year of Emperor Chuai, the year 200, the great Kego deity appeared at Fukusaki, and when Empress Jingu went on her campaign to the three Han the great Kego deity guarded her fleet. In 1601, when Kuroda Nagamasa built Fukuoka Castle, the shrine was merged into Kogarasu Shrine on the hill at Shimokego village; on the seventh day of the seventh month of 1608, when the new hall was finished, it was installed on its present site. Three deities are enshrined as the three Kego deities: Yasomagatsuhi, Kannaobi and Onaobi. The name Kego carries the meaning of holding fast what matters against defilement and calamity from outside.

Origin and history

In the ninth year of Emperor Chuai, the year 200, the great Kego deity appeared at Fukusaki, and when Empress Jingu went on her campaign to the three Han the great Kego deity guarded her fleet.

In 1601, when Kuroda Nagamasa built Fukuoka Castle, the shrine was merged into Kogarasu Shrine on the hill at Shimokego village; on the seventh day of the seventh month of 1608, when the new hall was finished, it was installed on its present site.

Three deities are enshrined as the three Kego deities: Yasomagatsuhi, Kannaobi and Onaobi. The name Kego carries the meaning of holding fast what matters against defilement and calamity from outside.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotProtection & Safety

  The name carries the devotion

  The name Kego carries the meaning of holding fast what matters against defilement and calamity from outside.

  documented history

• Origin

  A deity that guarded a fleet

  The great Kego deity appeared at Fukusaki in the year 200, and guarded Empress Jingu’s fleet on her campaign to the three Han.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  Moved for Fukuoka Castle

  In 1601 the shrine was merged away for Kuroda Nagamasa’s building of Fukuoka Castle, and was installed on its present site in 1608.

  documented history

This shrine writes down what its own name means. Kego — holding fast what matters against defilement and calamity from outside. Instead of listing what it is good for, a single word in the name is made to carry the whole content of the devotion. Kamado Shrine, also in Fukuoka, explains its virtue by taking apart the characters of Tamayorihime in the same way.

In the Empress Jingu material, the deity here is on the protecting side. When she went on campaign, the great Kego deity guarded her fleet. Across this list Empress Jingu is variously the one who prays, the one who gives birth and the one enshrined; here she is the one escorted.

This is also a shrine moved for a castle. In 1601 Kuroda Nagamasa was building Fukuoka Castle, and the shrine was merged away; it reached its present site on the seventh day of the seventh month of 1608. In Osaka, Ikasuri Shrine, Kozu-gu and Namba Shrine were all moved for Osaka Castle. A castle going up and a shrine being moved is a shape that repeats with a different castle and a different lord.

All three deities are concerned with calamity and its setting right: Yasomagatsuhi, Kannaobi and Onaobi.

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. 警固神社について — Kego Shrine (accessed 2026-08-15)