Sumiyoshi Shrine

Quick facts

Address

3-1-51 Sumiyoshi, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka

Spiritual entities

Amaterasu Ōmikami (天照大御神) · Empress Jingu (神功皇后) · Izanagi (伊邪那岐命)

About this place

Sumiyoshi Shrine is in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka. Its deities are the three Sumiyoshi deities — Sokotsutsunoo, Nakatsutsunoo and Uwatsutsunoo — with Amaterasu and Empress Jingu enshrined alongside. By the account in the Kojiki, they came into being when Izanagi performed the rite of purification at Awagihara by the small gate of Tachibana in Himuka in Tsukushi. Its history goes back more than eighteen hundred years, and among the 2,129 Sumiyoshi shrines in the country it is said to be the first; old books record it as the head Sumiyoshi shrine and as the first Sumiyoshi shrine in Japan. Its virtue is as a deity who, by purity of body and mind, guards against every calamity, and it is also deeply revered as a guardian of voyages and of the sea.

Origin and history

The deities are the three Sumiyoshi deities — Sokotsutsunoo, Nakatsutsunoo and Uwatsutsunoo — with Amaterasu and Empress Jingu enshrined alongside.

By the account in the Kojiki, they came into being when Izanagi performed the rite of purification at Awagihara by the small gate of Tachibana in Himuka in Tsukushi.

Its history goes back more than eighteen hundred years, and among the 2,129 Sumiyoshi shrines in the country it is said to be the first; old books record it as the head Sumiyoshi shrine and as the first Sumiyoshi shrine in Japan.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotPurificationProtection & Safety

  Purity as the means

  It is revered as a deity who, by purity of body and mind, guards against every calamity, and as a guardian of voyages and the sea.

  documented history

• Origin

  Born during a purification

  By the Kojiki’s account the deities came into being when Izanagi performed the rite of purification at Awagihara in Tsukushi.

  documented history

• Origin

  The first Sumiyoshi shrine in Japan

  Among the 2,129 Sumiyoshi shrines in the country it is said to be the first, and old books record it as the head shrine.

  folk tradition

What this shrine states is not what it is good for but how it protects. A deity who, by purity of body and mind, guards against every calamity — purity is the method, and everything is what it guards against. Where most shrines list wishes, this one puts the means first.

The method matches the manner of the deities’ birth. They came into being, the shrine quotes from the Kojiki, when Izanagi performed the rite of purification at Awagihara. Deities who appeared in the middle of a washing are enshrined as deities who protect by washing.

The shrine records that among the 2,129 Sumiyoshi shrines in the country it is said to be the first, and that old books call it the head Sumiyoshi shrine and the first in Japan. Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka is also on this list. This page does not decide which came first; it records that this shrine says so.

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. 住吉神社について — Sumiyoshi Shrine, Fukuoka (accessed 2026-08-15)