Matsunoo Taisha

Quick facts

Address

3 Arashiyama Miyamachi, Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto

Spiritual entities

Ōyamakui no Kami (大山咋神)

About this place

Matsunoo Taisha stands in Nishikyo, Kyoto. In 701, under Emperor Monmu, Hata no Imiki Tori built the shrine at its present site at the foot of the mountain by imperial command. Its deity Oyamakui had been venerated before that at a rock seat on Matsuoyama. From the late Muromachi period the shrine has been revered as Japan’s foremost deity of sake brewing — a standing the shrine traces to the Hata clan’s skill in making sake, evidenced by clan members whose names carried the character for sake.

Origin and history

By the shrine’s account, in 701, the first year of Taihō under Emperor Monmu, Hata no Imiki Tori built the shrine at its present site at the foot of the mountain by imperial command. The deity Oyamakui had been venerated before that at a rock seat on Matsuoyama.

The shrine records that its standing since the late Muromachi period as Japan’s foremost deity of sake brewing derives from the Hata clan’s skill in the craft.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotSkill & Mastery

  Japan’s foremost brewing deity

  From the late Muromachi period the shrine has been revered as Japan’s foremost deity of sake brewing.

  documented history

• Origin

  Founded by a clan of brewers

  The shrine traces that standing to the Hata clan’s skill in making sake — clan members bore the character for sake in their names.

  documented history

• Origin

  The rock seat came first

  Oyamakui was venerated at a rock seat on Matsuoyama before the shrine building was raised in 701.

  documented history

Why this is the sake shrine is explained not through the nature of the deity but through the history of a family. The Hata clan who built it were brewers — that is where the shrine’s own explanation lands, citing clan members whose names carried the character for sake.

So the prayer here points at the making rather than the selling. Brewers still come from across the country, not to ask that the sake sell, but that it brew well.

The order is preserved too: the deity came first, the building after. Oyamakui was venerated at the rock seat on Matsuoyama before the shrine was raised in 701.

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. 歴史・由緒 — 松尾大社 — Matsunoo Taisha (accessed 2026-08-13)