Kotoni Jinja
Takehaya Jinja
Researched and translated with AI assistance. Every claim is linked to its source, but errors get through, so check the official site for opening times, fees and closures.About
In short
Founded by the 240 households of Hokkaido’s first farmer-soldiers, who gave their old domain’s founder a god’s name and built the shrine under it.
Quick facts
- Address
- 1-7-1-30 Kotoni 1-jo, Nishi-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido
- Spiritual entities
- Amaterasu Ōmikami (天照大御神) · Ōkuninushi (大国主命)
About this place
Kotoni Jinja stands in Nishi-ku, Sapporo. Its deities are Amaterasu, Toyouke, Okuninushi, Takehaya-chio and Hanitsu-no-mitama. In 1875 the 240 households who settled at Kotoni as the Hokkaido Colonisation Commission’s first farmer-soldiers, honouring the memory of Date Tōgorō Shigezane, founder of their former domain of Watari in Miyagi, gave him the reverent name Takehaya-chio-no-kami and, to make his virtue known in the opening of Hokkaido, founded the shrine under the name Takehaya Jinja. It moved to Yamanote in 1897, added Okuninushi in 1911, moved to its present site in 1915 and was recognised as a district shrine. The deities of Ise were added in 1967 and Hanitsu-no-mitama in 1994. The annual festival is 4 September. No benefit that may be prayed for is stated.
Origin and history
In 1875 the 240 households who settled at Kotoni as the Hokkaido Colonisation Commission’s first farmer-soldiers, honouring the memory of Date Tōgorō Shigezane, founder of their former domain of Watari in Miyagi, gave him the reverent name Takehaya-chio-no-kami and, to make his virtue known in the opening of Hokkaido, founded the shrine under the name Takehaya Jinja.
It moved to Yamanote in 1897, added Okuninushi in 1911, and moved to its present site in 1915, where it was recognised as a district shrine.
The deities of Ise were added in 1967 and Hanitsu-no-mitama in 1994.
What it is locally associated with
An old domain’s founder given a god’s name
Honouring Date Tōgorō Shigezane, founder of their former domain of Watari in Miyagi, the settlers named him Takehaya-chio-no-kami and founded the shrine as Takehaya Jinja.
documented historyThe first 240 farmer-soldier households
It was founded in 1875 by the 240 households who settled at Kotoni as the Colonisation Commission’s first farmer-soldiers.
documented historyDeities added across a century
Okuninushi was added in 1911, the deities of Ise in 1967, and Hanitsu-no-mitama in 1994.
documented history
What this shrine brought from home was not a god but a man. Honouring the memory of Date Tōgorō Shigezane, founder of the old domain of Watari, the settlers gave him a god’s name — Takehaya-chio-no-kami — and made that name the shrine’s. Its first name was Takehaya Jinja.
Sapporo’s shrines nearly all carry something with them. Hokkaido Jingu’s three deities came by ship and on a man’s back from Tokyo; Miyoshi Jinja’s founder brought a divided spirit from Akita; Nishino Jinja’s five households came holding the guardian deity of home. This is the only one that takes a person who lived and died and makes him a god. Elsewhere on this list — Togo Jinja and Meiji Jingu in Tokyo, Hokoku Jinja in Osaka — shrines enshrine people too, but those are figures of the centre. This one is the lord of the place the settlers left.
Even the number who came is recorded: 240 households, the very first farmer-soldiers of the Colonisation Commission. The beginning of that institution is this shrine’s parish.
The deities have grown to five, added across more than a century — 1911, 1967, 1994. The page names no benefit, so this page carries no tag for what may be prayed for.
Claims and evidence levels 2
- The 240 households of Hokkaido’s first farmer-soldiers founded the shrine in 1875, naming their former domain’s founder Takehaya-chio-no-kami. documented history
- It was first called Takehaya Jinja, moved to its present site in 1915, and has added deities as late as 1994. documented history
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
- 琴似神社 — 北海道神社庁札幌支部 (accessed 2026-08-16)
Last updated:
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