Miyajidake Shrine

Quick facts

Address

7-1 Miyaji Motomachi, Fukutsu, Fukuoka

Spiritual entities

Empress Jingu (神功皇后)

About this place

Miyajidake Shrine is in Fukutsu, Fukuoka. Its deities are Okinagatarashihime, otherwise Empress Jingu, together with Katsumura no Okami and Katsuyori no Okami. The Kojiki, the Nihon Shoki and other records say that on her crossing she stayed in this land, and that from the summit of Miyajidake, looking out over the open sea, she set up an altar to the deities of heaven and earth and prayed: “Bearing the mandate of heaven I shall cross to that land; grant me, I pray, an opening of fortune” — and then set sail. Afterwards the head of the Azumi clan who had accompanied her was enshrined with her, the three together as the three deities of Miyajidake. The shrine is revered as a deity of opening fortune who prevails over anything and who will grant any wish at all. In the precinct stands the largest horizontal stone chamber in Japan, in which twenty national treasures and several hundred further treasures lay.

Origin and history

The deities are Okinagatarashihime, otherwise Empress Jingu, together with Katsumura no Okami and Katsuyori no Okami.

The Kojiki, the Nihon Shoki and other records say that on her crossing she stayed in this land, and that from the summit of Miyajidake, looking out over the open sea, she set up an altar to the deities of heaven and earth and prayed: “Bearing the mandate of heaven I shall cross to that land; grant me, I pray, an opening of fortune” — and then set sail. Afterwards the head of the Azumi clan who had accompanied her was enshrined with her, the three together as the three deities of Miyajidake.

Eighteen hundred years ago that mountain was a sacred precinct of the northern Kyushu court. The largest horizontal stone chamber in Japan, in which twenty national treasures and several hundred further treasures lay, speaks for its history.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotWish Fulfillment

  Any wish at all

  The deity is revered as one of opening fortune who prevails over anything and who will grant any wish at all.

  folk tradition

• Origin

  A prayer from the summit, then a sailing

  From the summit she set up an altar and prayed, “Bearing the mandate of heaven I shall cross to that land; grant me, I pray, an opening of fortune”, and then set sail.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  The largest stone chamber in Japan

  The precinct holds the largest horizontal stone chamber in Japan, in which twenty national treasures and several hundred further treasures lay.

  documented history

What survives here are the words a person said. Bearing the mandate of heaven I shall cross to that land; grant me, I pray, an opening of fortune — spoken, the shrine records, from the summit of Miyajidake looking out over the open sea, before the sailing. Quoted speech on this list is usually the god’s: at Katsuragi Hitokotonushi Shrine and Niukawakami in Nara the deity speaks in the first person. Here it is the human half of the exchange that was kept.

The wishes are not bounded. A deity of opening fortune who prevails over anything, who will grant any wish at all — that is how the shrine puts it. Declining to narrow what it is good for is itself the character of the place.

Three deities are enshrined, and two of them are the head of the clan who accompanied her. The one who prayed and the ones who crossed with her stand together.

In the precinct is the largest horizontal stone chamber in Japan, in which twenty national treasures and several hundred further treasures lay. A place of prayer standing over a grave is a shape this list has met before, at Mozu Hachimangu in Osaka.

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・御由緒 — Miyajidake Shrine (accessed 2026-08-15)
2. 宮地嶽神社 — Miyajidake Shrine (accessed 2026-08-15)