Tooka Ebisu Shrine

Shrine · Fukuoka

Researched and translated with AI assistance. Every claim is linked to its source, but errors get through, so check the official site for opening times, fees and closures.About

In short

It began when a man walking home from Kashiigu and Hakozakigu picked an image of Ebisu up off the tide line, and a hall was built for it on the tenth day of the first month the following year.

The worship hall of Tooka Ebisu Shrine in Hakata. — そらみみ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quick facts

Address: 7-1 Higashi Koen, Hakata-ku, Fukuoka
Spiritual entities: Ebisu (恵比寿, Sukunahikona) · Ōkuninushi (大国主命)

About this place

Tooka Ebisu Shrine is in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka. Its deities are Kotoshironushi, that is Ebisu, and Okuninushi, that is Daikoku. On the third day of the first month of 1591, having gone at the new year to his father’s house at Kashii, and on the way back from worshipping at Kashiigu and Hakozakigu, a man picked up an image of the great deity Ebisu at the tide line on the beach. On the tenth day of the first month of 1592 a hall was built and Ebisu enshrined, and Tooka Ebisu Shrine was founded. Prayers offered here are for prosperity in business, safety in the household, warding off misfortune, the tying of bonds, safety in traffic and prosperity in fishing. Of Daikoku the shrine says he is a deity of binding, who ties the various bonds between person and person, person and society, person and happiness.

Origin and history

On the third day of the first month of 1591, having gone at the new year to his father’s house at Kashii, and on the way back from worshipping at Kashiigu and Hakozakigu, a man picked up an image of the great deity Ebisu at the tide line on the beach.

On the tenth day of the first month of 1592 a hall was built and Ebisu enshrined, and Tooka Ebisu Shrine was founded.

The deities are Kotoshironushi, that is Ebisu, and Okuninushi, that is Daikoku. Of Daikoku the shrine says he is a deity of binding, who ties the bonds between person and person, person and society, person and happiness.

What it is locally associated with

Origin
An image found at the tide line
On the third day of the first month of 1591, returning from Kashiigu and Hakozakigu, a man picked up an image of Ebisu at the tide line on the beach.
folk tradition
Origin
The tenth day became the name
A hall was built and Ebisu enshrined on the tenth day of the first month of 1592, and that date is the shrine’s name.
documented history
Power spotMoney & ProsperityFamily & HomeProtection & SafetyLove & Romance
From business to the tying of bonds
Prayers here are for prosperity in business, safety in the household, warding off misfortune, the tying of bonds, traffic safety and prosperity in fishing.
documented history

This shrine begins with something found. On the way back from worshipping at Kashiigu and Hakozakigu, an image of Ebisu was picked up at the tide line — not brought by anyone, not commissioned, but washed up at the water’s edge and made the deity. Elsewhere on this list, Hase-dera in Nara carved its principal image from a sacred log that had drifted from Takashima in Omi. Places whose history begins with something arriving by water recur here.

About a year passed between the finding and the enshrining. The image was picked up on the third day of the first month of 1591; the hall was built on the tenth day of the first month of 1592. That tenth day is the shrine’s name.

The founding account names two other shrines in the same prefecture. Kashiigu and Hakozakigu are both on this list, so a single clause about the way home ties three places together.

The prayers begin with prosperity in business, then safety in the household, warding off misfortune, the tying of bonds, safety in traffic and prosperity in fishing. Of Daikoku the shrine says he ties the bonds between person and person, person and society, and person and happiness.

Claims and evidence levels 2

On the third day of the first month of 1591 a man returning from Kashiigu and Hakozakigu picked up an image of Ebisu at the tide line. folk tradition
A hall was built and Ebisu enshrined on the tenth day of the first month of 1592, which is the origin of the shrine’s name. documented history

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.