Sukunahikona Jinja

Quick facts

Address

2-1-8 Doshomachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka

About this place

Sukunahikona Jinja stands in Doshomachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka. It enshrines Sukunahikona, the founding deity of Japanese medicine, together with Yandi Shennong, the founding deity of Chinese medicine, and is revered as the grand guardian of medicine in Japan. Sukunahikona is said to have built the land together with Okuninushi and is held to be a deity of many powers — medicine, incantation, hot springs and sake brewing among them. Shennong is said to have taught people the arts of medicine and farming. The shrine began in 1780, when Sukunahikona was invited from the Gojo Tenjin shrine in Kyoto into the merchants’ guild meeting hall and enshrined alongside Shennong, who had been worshipped there before. It is known as a shrine for recovery from illness and the attainment of health.

Origin and history

Sukunahikona is said to have built the land together with Okuninushi, and is held to be a deity of many powers — medicine, incantation, hot springs and sake brewing among them. The other enshrined deity, Yandi Shennong, is said to have taught people the arts of medicine and farming.

Doshomachi in Osaka had been gathering dealers in medicinal goods since about the Toyotomi period, as a place of trade in drugs.

In 1780 Sukunahikona was invited from the Gojo Tenjin shrine in Kyoto into the merchants’ guild meeting hall and enshrined together with Shennong, who had been worshipped there already. That is the shrine’s beginning.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  A deity invited into a guild hall

  In 1780 Sukunahikona was invited from the Gojo Tenjin shrine in Kyoto into the merchants’ guild meeting hall and enshrined together with Shennong.

  documented history

• Power spotHealth & Healing

  Recovery from illness, attainment of health

  Enshrining the founding deities of Japanese and Chinese medicine, it is revered as the grand guardian of medicine and known as a shrine for health.

  documented history

• What people do here

  A street of drug dealers

  Doshomachi had been gathering dealers in medicinal goods since about the Toyotomi period, as a place of trade in drugs.

  documented history

This shrine was not raised by an emperor or a monk but by a trade association. Doshomachi had been a street of drug dealers since about the Toyotomi period. In 1780 that guild invited Sukunahikona from the Gojo Tenjin shrine in Kyoto into its own meeting hall — that, the shrine records, is the beginning. The room where the merchants met became the shrine.

Two deities are enshrined, and they come from different countries: Sukunahikona, founding deity of Japanese medicine, and Yandi Shennong, founding deity of Chinese medicine. A street that dealt in drugs did not choose its god of medicine by origin; it kept both. The shrine calls itself the grand guardian of medicine in Japan.

Sukunahikona is said to have built the land with Okuninushi and to govern incantation, hot springs and brewing besides medicine. Shennong is said to have taught medicine and farming. What this shrine takes in is prayers for recovery from illness and the attainment of health.

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. 祭神・由緒 — Sukunahikona Jinja (accessed 2026-08-14)
2. 少彦名神社 — Sukunahikona Jinja (accessed 2026-08-14)