Takakamo Shrine

Quick facts

Address

1110 Kamokami, Gose, Nara

About this place

Takakamo Shrine is in Gose, Nara. Its deities are Ajishikitakahikone, also called Kamo no Omikami, together with Kotoshironushi, Ajisukihayao, Shitateruhime and Amewakahiko. It is held to be one of the oldest shrines in Japan, with rites performed since the middle Yayoi period, and the parent shrine of the Kamo shrines throughout the country. In the first month of 859, under Emperor Seiwa, its deities — who had stood at junior second rank alongside those of Omiwa Shrine and Oyamato Shrine, the eminent shrines of Yamato — were together raised to senior first rank. The main hall was rebuilt in 1543, in the Muromachi period, and is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property. Devotion here runs deep around renewal — recovery from illness, the first shrine visit, the great purification — and the deity is revered across the country as one who awakens people to the path they walk.

Origin and history

Takakamo Shrine is held to be one of the oldest shrines in Japan, with rites performed since the middle Yayoi period, and the parent shrine of the Kamo shrines throughout the country. Its deities are Ajishikitakahikone, also called Kamo no Omikami, together with Kotoshironushi, Ajisukihayao, Shitateruhime and Amewakahiko.

In the first month of 859, under Emperor Seiwa, its deities — who had stood at junior second rank alongside those of Omiwa Shrine and Oyamato Shrine, the eminent shrines of Yamato — were together raised to senior first rank.

The main hall was rebuilt in 1543, in the Muromachi period, and is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property.

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotHealth & HealingPurificationFamily & Home

  A devotion around renewal

  Devotion here runs deep around renewal — recovery from illness, the first shrine visit, the great purification — and the deity is revered as one who awakens people to their path.

  documented history

• Origin

  Parent of the Kamo shrines

  It is held to be one of the oldest shrines in Japan, with rites since the middle Yayoi period, and the parent shrine of the Kamo shrines throughout the country.

  folk tradition

• What people do here

  A Muromachi main hall

  The main hall was rebuilt in 1543 and is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property.

  documented history

The devotion here is gathered under one word: renewal. Recovery from illness, the first shrine visit, the great purification — coming back from sickness, being born, and washing off defilement all stand together under it, and the deity is revered as one who awakens people to the path they walk. Three of those answer to tags on this site. Renewal itself, and the awakening to a path, have no tag that fits.

This shrine names another shrine on this list outright. In the first month of 859, its deities, standing at junior second rank alongside those of Omiwa Shrine and Oyamato Shrine, the eminent shrines of Yamato, were together raised to senior first rank. Omiwa Shrine in Nara is on this site too — and one page naming another by name is rare here.

The shrine describes itself as one of the oldest in Japan, with rites performed since the middle Yayoi period, and as the parent shrine of the Kamo shrines throughout the country.

The main hall dates from 1543, a Muromachi rebuilding, and is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property.

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. 高鴨神社について — Takakamo Shrine (accessed 2026-08-15)