Yasaka Jinja

Shrine · Kyoto

Gion-san · Yasaka Shrine

Health & Healing

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

The Gion shrine of Susanoo, which has kept up for some eleven hundred and fifty years a festival begun as a prayer that an epidemic be quelled.

The vermilion west gate of Yasaka Shrine at the end of Shijo street. — DXR / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quick facts

Address: 625 Gionmachi Kitagawa, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto
Spiritual entities: Susanoo no Mikoto (素盞嗚尊)

About this place

Yasaka Jinja stands in Gion, Higashiyama, Kyoto, and enshrines Susanoo. The shrine records that its founding reaches back before the capital was moved to Heian-kyo. About eleven hundred and fifty years ago, in the Heian period, the Gion festival began as a prayer that an epidemic be quelled. The shrine records that it has been venerated as a shrine for the dispelling of epidemic disease.

Origin and history

Yasaka Jinja enshrines Susanoo, and the shrine records that its founding reaches back before the move of the capital to Heian-kyo.

The Gion festival began about eleven hundred and fifty years ago, in the Heian period, from a prayer that an epidemic be quelled.

What it is locally associated with

OriginHealth & Healing
That the epidemic be quelled
The Gion festival began about eleven hundred and fifty years ago from a prayer that an epidemic be quelled.
documented history
Power spot
A shrine for dispelling epidemic
The shrine records that it has been venerated for the dispelling of epidemic disease.
documented history
Origin
Older than the capital
The shrine records its founding as reaching back before the move to Heian-kyo, and gives no year.
documented history

The devotion here is the festival itself. Gion Matsuri did not begin as a spectacle; it began as a prayer that an epidemic be quelled, some eleven hundred and fifty years ago.

Each July the floats go through the streets. Underneath the procession is one wish: that the sickness recede. However large the festival grew and however many came to watch, the reason it started is still there in the shrine’s own words.

On the year of its founding the shrine gives no date, only that it reaches back before the capital moved. This page goes no further either.

Claims and evidence levels 3

Yasaka Jinja enshrines Susanoo, and the shrine records its founding as reaching back before the capital moved to Heian-kyo. documented history
The Gion festival began about eleven hundred and fifty years ago, in the Heian period, from a prayer that an epidemic be quelled. documented history
The shrine records that it has been venerated for the dispelling of epidemic disease. documented history

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