Musashi Mitake Shrine

Quick facts

Address

176 Mitakesan, Ome-shi, Tokyo 198-0175

Access

From Mitake station on the JR Ome line, by bus to the cable car, then the cable car up the mountain and a walk of about twenty-five minutes to the shrine.

Hours

The shrine sits at the top of Mount Mitake and is reached by cable car and then a walk uphill, so the practical limit on a visit is the cable car timetable rather than a gate time. Check it before travelling.

Best time

The shrine keeps a full ritual calendar including the futomani divination rite, the sunrise festival, horseback archery and kagura. Dog blessings are performed year-round.

Spiritual entities

Ebisu (恵比寿, Sukunahikona) · Ōkuchi-no-Magami (大口真神, Oinu-sama) · Ōkuninushi (大国主命)

Official site

musashimitakejinja.jp

About this place

Musashi Mitake Shrine stands near the summit of Mount Mitake, reached by cable car and then a climb. Its guardian is not a lion but a wolf: the shrine says the oinu-sama it is known for is the Japanese wolf, and the guardian figures at the main hall are wolves rather than the usual Chinese lions. It has been turned to against theft and against evil for centuries, and today people bring their dogs.

Origin and history

The shrine dates its founding to the reign of the tenth emperor, Sujin, when Takenunakawawake enshrined Ōnamuchi and Sukunahikona while pacifying the twelve eastern roads.

The oldest written record it cites is from 736, when the monk Gyōki is recorded as praying for the protection of the eastern provinces and installing an image of Kongō Zaō Gongen. From then the mountain was known as a place of Zaō devotion, of Shugendō and of mountain worship. The Heian-period register of deities lists the local land deity here under an older name.

In the medieval period mountain worship grew and the mountain became the centre of Shugendō in the Kanto region. In the Kamakura period it was revered by powerful warriors under the name Kinpusen Mitake Zaō Gongen, and the shrine relates that Hatakeyama Shigetada donated armour, a saddle and a sword. War fires left it derelict, and it was restored in 1234 by imperial command, repaired in 1359 by the deputy shogun Ashikaga Motouji, and rebuilt in 1511.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu was enfeoffed in the Kanto in 1590 the shrine received thirty koku, and in 1606 his order had the hall rebuilt. That rebuilding turned it around: the hall had faced south, and was reoriented to face east so that it stood as the western guard of Edo. The present offering and worship halls date from 1700, built by order of the fifth shogun, Tsunayoshi.

In the middle of the Edo period ordinary people began making pilgrimages, and the oshi, the shrine's own resident guides, organised them into confraternities that spread Mitake devotion across the Kanto plain. The shrine was renamed twice after the Meiji restoration, taking its present name in 1952.

What it is locally associated with

• Origin

  The wolf that showed the way

  The shrine tells of a white wolf that guided Yamato Takeru when he lost his way here, and was told to remain on the mountain as Ōkuchi-no-Magami and destroy all demons.

  folk tradition

• Power spotProtection & Safety

  Against theft and against evil

  From the 1830s Ōkuchi-no-Magami became widely known for warding off evil and preventing theft, and was affectionately called oinu-sama. The charms carry the wolf.

  documented history

• Power spot

  Guardian figures that are wolves

  The bronze pair at the main hall, dated 1783, are modelled on the Japanese wolf rather than the usual Chinese lions. A second pair from 1985 stands before the hall.

  documented history

• What people do here

  Blessings for dogs

  Because of the wolf, people began bringing dogs. The shrine responded to the requests and now performs blessings for pet dogs at the shrine front, all year.

  local custom

This shrine summarises itself as a place turned to against theft, against evil, and for a good harvest, and the first two are why this page carries the warding tag. All three run back to the same figure, and it is an unusual one.

The shrine is plain about what the oinu-sama is: the Japanese wolf. Its own telling is that when Yamato Takeru came east and tried to go north-west from this mountain, a malign deity of the deep mountains took the form of a great white deer and blocked the way. He killed the deer, but the mountains and valleys shook, cloud and mist came down, and he lost the path. A white wolf appeared and led his army north-west, and he told it to remain on this mountain as Ōkuchi-no-Magami and destroy every demon. From about the 1830s that deity was widely known for warding off evil and preventing theft, and people came to call it oinu-sama.

The wolf is visible rather than notional. The guardian figures at the main hall are bronze, dated 1783, and are modelled on the Japanese wolf instead of the Chinese lions found almost everywhere else; the pair standing before the hall was made by the sculptor of the Nagasaki peace statue and dedicated in 1985. On the paper charms the wolf's eye carries a crescent moon, because the three Mitake of Japan were likened to snow, moon and flower, and this one was the moon.

The shrine adds something worth keeping. The Japanese wolf is now held to be extinct, but until relatively recently wolves and people lived alongside each other on this mountain: frightening, and at the same time welcome, because they ate the animals that spoiled the fields. That is the sort of detail that explains a devotion better than a list of blessings does.

In recent years visitors have brought their dogs, on the strength of the name, and the shrine says it began performing blessings for pet dogs in response to those requests. It does them at the shrine front throughout the year.

Visiting tips

The general form is in the visiting guide below. Specific to Musashi Mitake:

This is a mountain, not a walk from a station. The shrine sits near the summit at around 900 metres, reached by cable car and then a climb on foot, so the cable car timetable sets the shape of a visit and should be checked before setting out.

The oshi, the shrine's resident guides, still keep lodgings on the mountain, and the place is a working site of pilgrimage and training rather than a viewpoint.

Dogs are welcome here, which is not true of shrines in general, and the shrine performs blessings for them. That is a local practice and not a licence to bring animals elsewhere.

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. History of the shrine (神社由緒) — Musashi Mitake Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
2. Oinu-sama, the wolf (おいぬ様) — Musashi Mitake Shrine (accessed 2026-08-02)
3. Musashi Mitake Shrine (Q6587276) coordinate location — Wikidata (accessed 2026-08-02)