Tsuyu no Tenjinsha

Quick facts

Address

2-5-4 Sonezaki, Kita-ku, Osaka

Spiritual entities

Amaterasu Ōmikami (天照大御神) · Ōkuninushi (大国主命) · Tenjin (天神, Sugawara no Michizane)

About this place

Tsuyu no Tenjinsha is in Kita, Osaka. It is an old shrine with thirteen hundred years of history since its founding, one of the sites of the old Naniwa Yasoshima rite. Five deities are enshrined — Sukunahikona, Onamuchi, Amaterasu, Toyoukehime and Sugawara no Michizane — and its blessings are named as recovery from illness, prosperity in business, long fortune in arms, the binding of ties and achievement in study. Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Sonezaki Shinju was made from an incident of 7 April 1703, when Ohatsu, a courtesan of the Tenmaya in Dojima Shinchi, and Tokubee, a clerk of the Hiranoya in Uchihonmachi, died together in this shrine’s Tenjin grove. Many people who wish for love to be fulfilled come here now.

Origin and history

Tsuyu no Tenjinsha is an old shrine with thirteen hundred years of history since its founding, and one of the sites of the old Naniwa Yasoshima rite.

Five deities are enshrined. Sukunahikona is the guardian of medicine, pharmacy, recovery from illness, prosperity in business, brewing, hot springs and the governing of the land; Onamuchi of the governing of the land, long fortune in arms, recovery from illness and the binding of ties; Amaterasu is the great ancestral deity of the imperial house, of boundless virtue and shining light; Toyoukehime presides over the food of all people under heaven; and Sugawara no Michizane is the deity of study and learning.

One account derives the shrine’s name from a poem of Michizane’s: "the dew-scattered tears have worn my sleeves away, when I remember the capital".

What it is locally associated with

• Power spotLove & Romance

  Wishes for love

  The double suicide in the Tenjin grove became Sonezaki Shinju, and many who wish for love to be fulfilled now come; Onamuchi is named guardian of the binding of ties.

  folk tradition

• Power spotHealth & HealingMoney & ProsperityExams & Study

  Five deities, five portfolios

  Its blessings are named as recovery from illness, prosperity in business, long fortune in arms, the binding of ties and achievement in study.

  documented history

• Origin

  Thirteen hundred years

  An old shrine with thirteen hundred years of history since its founding, and one of the sites of the old Naniwa Yasoshima rite.

  documented history

The reason love-wishes gather here is not a happy story. On 7 April 1703, Ohatsu, a courtesan of the Tenmaya in Dojima Shinchi, and Tokubee, a clerk of the Hiranoya in Uchihonmachi, died together in this shrine’s Tenjin grove. Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote Sonezaki Shinju from that incident. That is as far as the shrine’s account goes — and now many people who wish for love to be fulfilled come here.

Five deities are enshrined, and the shrine gives each one a portfolio. The binding of ties belongs to Onamuchi; study and learning to Michizane; recovery from illness and prosperity in business to Sukunahikona. The breadth of what can be asked here is five deities’ worth, added together.

One account traces the shrine’s name to a poem of Michizane’s about dew-scattered tears. The dew was in this shrine’s name from the beginning.

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. 神社について — Tsuyu no Tenjinsha (accessed 2026-08-14)
2. 露天神社（お初天神） — Tsuyu no Tenjinsha (accessed 2026-08-14)