Niukawakami Shrine, Middle Shrine

Quick facts

Address

968 O, Higashiyoshino, Yoshino, Nara

Spiritual entities

Izanagi (伊邪那岐命) · Izanami (伊邪那美命)

About this place

Niukawakami Shrine, Middle Shrine, is in Higashiyoshino, Nara. In 675, under the fortieth sovereign Emperor Tenmu, it was founded on the oracle: "If you raise my shrine pillars and revere me at Niukawakami, in the deep mountains of Yoshino where no human voice is heard, I shall send sweet rain for the realm and stop the long rains." Its chief deity is Mizuhanome, with Izanami and Izanagi in the same hall. The Engishiki of 927 lists it among the great shrines of eminent deities, and from the middle Heian period it was counted among the twenty-two shrines as a deity of prayer for rain. On the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of 763, during a long drought, offerings were made to the deities of the four home provinces, and at Niukawakami a black horse was presented in addition to the offerings. A black horse was presented when rain was sought, and a white or red horse when rain was to be stopped.

Origin and history

In 675, under the fortieth sovereign Emperor Tenmu, the shrine was founded on the oracle: "If you raise my shrine pillars and revere me at Niukawakami, in the deep mountains of Yoshino where no human voice is heard, I shall send sweet rain for the realm and stop the long rains."

The Engishiki of 927 lists it among the great shrines of eminent deities, and from the middle Heian period it was counted among the twenty-two shrines as a deity of prayer for rain.

On the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of 763, during a long drought, offerings were made to the deities of the four home provinces, and at Niukawakami a black horse was presented in addition to the offerings.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  The oracle is the founding condition

  The shrine was founded on the oracle that if its pillars were raised at Niukawakami and the deity revered, sweet rain would come for the realm and the long rains would stop.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  A black horse, or a white one

  A black horse was presented when rain was sought, and a white or red horse when rain was to be stopped.

  documented history

• Power spot

  One of the twenty-two shrines, for rain

  The Engishiki lists it among the great shrines of eminent deities, and from the middle Heian period it was counted among the twenty-two shrines as a deity of prayer for rain.

  documented history

Here the deity’s own words are the terms of the founding. Raise my shrine pillars in the deep mountains of Yoshino, where no human voice is heard, and revere me, and I shall send sweet rain for the realm and stop the long rains — the place required and the work undertaken stand together in one sentence. Katsuragi Hitokotonushi Shrine in Nara likewise transmits words the deity speaks of itself.

The manner of asking was colour-coded. A black horse was presented when rain was sought; a white or a red horse when rain was to be stopped. What you wanted decided the colour of what you gave. It was actually done: on the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of 763, in a long drought, offerings went to the deities of the four home provinces, and at Niukawakami a black horse went with them.

Mizuhanome, the chief deity, is described as the child of Izanagi and Izanami and the deity who governs water entirely. Of old, the shrine writes, people prayed here as to the master of rain — for abundant harvests, for rain in drought, and for the rain to stop when it had gone on too long.

This site has no tag for water or weather among the things people pray for. This page therefore carries no tag. What is prayed for here is what is written above.

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. 神社について — Niukawakami Shrine (accessed 2026-08-15)