Namba Yasaka Jinja

Quick facts

Address

2-9-19 Motomachi, Naniwa-ku, Osaka

Spiritual entities

Susanoo no Mikoto (素盞嗚尊)

About this place

Namba Yasaka Jinja is in Naniwa, Osaka. Its deity is Susanoo, described as the god who put down the great serpent and removed the hardship of the people. In earlier times it was called Namba Shimo no Miya and was the tutelary deity of the whole Namba district. From the latter half of the eleventh century it has been known as an old shrine of the Gion lineage. Its rope-pulling rite and summer festival are transmitted there.

Origin and history

Its deity is Susanoo, described as the god who put down the great serpent and removed the hardship of the people.

In earlier times it was called Namba Shimo no Miya, and was the tutelary deity of the whole Namba district.

From the latter half of the eleventh century it came to be known as an old shrine of the Gion lineage. Its rope-pulling rite and summer festival are transmitted there.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotProtection & Safety

  The god who removed the people’s hardship

  Its deity Susanoo is described as having put down the great serpent and removed the hardship of the people.

  folk tradition

• Origin

  Once Namba Shimo no Miya

  In earlier times it was called Namba Shimo no Miya and was tutelary deity of the whole Namba district; from the late eleventh century it has been known as an old Gion shrine.

  documented history

• What people do here

  The rope-pulling rite

  Its rope-pulling rite and summer festival are transmitted there.

  documented history

What this shrine puts forward is not the deity’s office but what the deity did. Susanoo put down the great serpent and removed the hardship of the people — and the verb is finished, not continuing. Not "he is a god who protects", but "he removed the hardship".

The name has moved. In earlier times it was Namba Shimo no Miya, tutelary deity of the whole district. From the latter half of the eleventh century it came to be known as an old shrine of the Gion lineage — a local tutelary shrine that came to be spoken of within a wider tradition.

Among the rites transmitted here is the rope-pulling ceremony.

One caution: this is not Namba Jinja. The names are close, they stand about a kilometre apart, and both are on this list.

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. 難波八阪神社 — Namba Yasaka Jinja (accessed 2026-08-15)