Kozu-gu

Quick facts

Address

1-1-29 Kozu, Chuo-ku, Osaka

About this place

Kozu-gu is in Chuo-ku, Osaka, and enshrines the sixteenth emperor, Nintoku. Its founding is dated to 866, when by imperial order of Emperor Seiwa the ruins of the old capital were searched out, the site fixed, and a hall built and the rite performed. In 1583 Toyotomi Hideyoshi moved it to its present site at the Himekoso shrine when Osaka Castle was built. Emperor Nintoku is honoured for the benevolent rule by which, climbing to a high pavilion and seeing how little cooking smoke rose from the houses, he understood the poverty of the people and at once stopped the taxes to relieve them; the Osaka city anthem still sings of the bustle of smoke rising from the people’s stoves. At the auxiliary shrines, prayers are offered for agriculture, commerce and industry, and safe childbirth.

Origin and history

The enshrined deity is the sixteenth emperor, Nintoku.

The founding is dated to 866, when by imperial order of Emperor Seiwa the ruins of the old capital were searched out, the site of the shrine fixed, a hall built and the rite performed. In 1583, in the reign of Emperor Ogimachi, Toyotomi Hideyoshi moved the shrine to its present site at the Himekoso shrine when Osaka Castle was built.

Emperor Nintoku is honoured for the benevolent rule by which, having climbed to a high pavilion and seen how little cooking smoke rose from the houses, he understood the people’s poverty and at once stopped the taxes and relieved them. The Osaka city anthem puts it as the bustle of smoke rising from the people’s stoves.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  The site was searched for

  In 866, by imperial order, the ruins of the old capital were searched out, the site fixed, and a hall built and the rite performed.

  documented history

• Power spot

  The people’s stoves

  Emperor Nintoku is honoured for seeing how little cooking smoke rose from the houses, understanding the people’s poverty, and stopping the taxes at once.

  documented history

• Power spotMoney & ProsperityFertility & Children

  Prayers at the auxiliary shrines

  At the auxiliary shrines, prayers are offered for agriculture, commerce and industry, and safe childbirth.

  documented history

This shrine was found before it was built. In 866, by imperial order, the ruins of the old capital were searched out, the site fixed, a hall raised and the rite performed. Not a dream and not an apparition — a survey decided where it would stand.

Of the emperor enshrined here, the shrine transmits one scene. He climbed to a high pavilion, saw how little cooking smoke rose from the houses, understood that the people were in want, and stopped the taxes at once. A ruler measuring his subjects’ lives by counting the smoke above their roofs; the city anthem still sings of that bustle of smoke.

Visitors revere that governing. The asking happens at the auxiliary shrines, where prayers are offered for agriculture, commerce and industry, and safe childbirth. Reverence at the main hall, petitions at the side ones.

In 1583 the shrine moved to the Himekoso site because Hideyoshi was building Osaka Castle. Ikasuri Jinja, elsewhere on this list, moved for exactly the same reason.

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. 御祭神・由緒 — Kozu-gu (accessed 2026-08-14)
2. 高津宮 — Kozu-gu (accessed 2026-08-14)