Now and Then 17

Iseyama Shrine: Meiji - Today



"The Grand Shrine of Iseyama was built as a talisman.

Protestants missionaries had ensconced themselves in Buddhist temples in Kanagawa directly after the port opened. French Catholics built the Tenshudo in 1861. Anglicans erected a church two years later. The settlers ate meat, not a widespread custom in Buddhist Japan. They rode, although the horse had been reserved for the samurai. The Settlement broadcast their beliefs, ways, and attitudes.

As a counterweight, Izeki Moritome, the deputy governor of Kanagawa prefecture, petitioned the Meiji oligarchy to establish a state shrine in Yokohama. The government agreed. It issued on April 14, 1870, a proclamation: "Amaterasu Omikami [The Sun Goddess] shall be invited to Iseyama and a grand shrine shall be built to pray for the protection of the nation and to promote the worship of the kami [gods] and the emperor." Its vicinity was renamed Iseyama.

A small shrine was moved from a knoll in Tobe to Nogeyama. It was built on a vastly larger scale and named Iseyama Kotai Jingu (the Grand Shrine of Iseyama). A ceremony for the division and the transfer of the Sun Goddess's spirit from the Grand Shrine of Ise, in present-day Mie Prefecture, to the new shrine was held on April 15, 1871. The day (May 15 by the solar calender, adopted in 1873) was celebrated as a city holiday until the Second World War. It is still celebrated, but in these days of separation of church and state, schools and public offices don't close for the gala.

The shrine precints cover 3.2 acres at the top of Iseyama hill (...)

Monuments recall the shrine’s origin in State Shinto. In the far-left corner of the precincts rises a moss-covered memorial to the government soldiers who fell in battle against the rebel army during the Seian War (1877) in Kyushu. In the right corner stands a memorial, inscribed in General Oyama Iwao’s hand, to Japan’s war dead. Soldiers would assemble at the monument and pray before leaving for the front in the Second World War."

(Burritt Sabin, 'A historical guide to Yokohama', ed. Yurindo, Yokohama, 2002, p. 117-119)