Tatsuta Taisha

Quick facts

Address

1-29-1 Tatsunominami, Sango, Ikoma, Nara

About this place

Tatsuta Taisha is in Sango, Nara, and enshrines the deity of wind. About 2,100 years ago, in the reign of the tenth sovereign Emperor Sujin, while the country was in turmoil with failed harvests and spreading plague, a shrine was built exactly as the great deity who appeared in the emperor’s dream directed; and it is transmitted that the crops then became abundant and the plague withdrew. Prayers offered here include prayers for children’s growth such as the first shrine visit and the seven-five-three, safety in traffic, warding off misfortune, warding off ill fortune in the house, and abundant harvest.

Origin and history

About 2,100 years ago, in the reign of the tenth sovereign Emperor Sujin, the country was in turmoil with failed harvests and spreading plague.

A shrine was built exactly as the great deity who appeared in the emperor’s dream directed, and it is transmitted that the crops then became abundant and the plague withdrew.

Prayers offered here include prayers for children’s growth such as the first shrine visit and the seven-five-three, safety in traffic, warding off misfortune, warding off ill fortune in the house, and abundant harvest.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  Built as the dream directed

  Amid failed harvests and plague, the shrine was built exactly as the great deity in the emperor’s dream directed, and the crops became abundant and the plague withdrew.

  folk tradition

• Power spotProtection & SafetyFamily & Home

  Warding off misfortune, and children’s growth

  Prayers here include children’s growth, safety in traffic, warding off misfortune, warding off ill fortune in the house, and abundant harvest.

  documented history

• Origin

  The deity of wind

  The shrine enshrines the deity of wind.

  documented history

This shrine stands as the outcome of a dream. With the country in turmoil from failed harvests and plague, a shrine was built exactly as the great deity in the emperor’s dream directed — and the crops became abundant and the plague withdrew. The dream, the compliance and the result are all one continuous account.

Other places on this list begin in dreams. Mizuma-dera in Osaka was built on a dream oracle given to Emperor Shomu, and Kurama-dera in Kyoto begins with Kancho climbing the mountain led by a dream and a white horse. This shrine is the one that also records the outcome.

What is enshrined here is the deity of wind. Given that the trouble it answered was failed harvests and disease — weather and sickness together — wind is a fitting object.

The founding is placed in the reign of the tenth sovereign, Emperor Sujin. Tamaki Shrine in Nara dates its founding to the same reign, so two places on this list start there.

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. 龍田大社 — Tatsuta Taisha (accessed 2026-08-15)