Sanko Jinja

Quick facts

Address

14-90 Tamatsukurihonmachi, Tennoji-ku, Osaka

Spiritual entities

Amaterasu Ōmikami (天照大御神) · Susanoo no Mikoto (素盞嗚尊)

About this place

Sanko Jinja stands on Sanadayama, on the Uemachi plateau southeast of Osaka Castle, and was formerly called Himeyama Jinja. Its deities are Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. Its founding is transmitted to the reign of the eighteenth sovereign, Hanzei, three generations after Nintoku. The shrine has been widely known since antiquity as the only deity in all Japan for warding off palsy, and its rite is held for seven days from 1 June each year. Its subsidiary shrines include the Takeuchi no Sukune hall, deity of long life; the Nomi no Sukune hall, deity of wrestling; and the Shusu Inari hall, deity presiding over the five grains and all food.

Origin and history

The shrine stands on Sanadayama, on the Uemachi plateau on the southeast of Osaka Castle, and was formerly called Himeyama Jinja, a name surviving from the ancient Pine Grove of the Princess.

Its deities are Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. Its founding is transmitted to the reign of the eighteenth sovereign, Hanzei, three generations after Nintoku.

The shrine has been widely known since antiquity as the only deity in all Japan for warding off palsy, and its rite is held for seven days from 1 June each year.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & Healing

  The only one in Japan

  The shrine has been widely known since antiquity as the only deity in all Japan for warding off palsy.

  documented history

• What people do here

  Seven days from 1 June

  The rite against palsy is held for seven days from 1 June each year.

  documented history

• Origin

  Once called Himeyama

  It stands on Sanadayama on the Uemachi plateau and was formerly called Himeyama Jinja; its founding is transmitted to the reign of Hanzei.

  folk tradition

This shrine’s sign is narrow, and it is singular. Since antiquity it has been widely known as the only deity in all Japan for warding off palsy — that is how the shrine puts it. Not one among several, not merely famous for it: the only one.

The rite has dates. Seven days from 1 June, every year. One week a year, the ground opens for this single thing.

The subsidiary shrines divide the rest between them. The Takeuchi no Sukune hall is the deity of long life, the Nomi no Sukune hall the deity of wrestling, and the Shusu Inari hall presides over the five grains and all food. The main shrine takes one illness; the smaller ones take lifespan, strength and food.

The deities are Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. The sun, the moon and their brother. Three lights, and the shrine is named after them.

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. 神社略歴 — Sanko Jinja (accessed 2026-08-15)