Kitano Tenmangu

Kitano Tenmangu enshrines Sugawara no Michizane and is the head shrine of the roughly 12,000 Tenmangu and Tenjin shrines across Japan. It began in 947, when, following a divine oracle, Michizane was enshrined at Kitano, northwest of the Heian capital. In 987 Emperor Ichijo granted him the divine title Kitano Tenman Daijizai Tenjin, and the imperial family has honored the shrine ever since. Today people come to pray for success in study and exams, for the arts, and for protection from misfortune.

Michizane was a scholar who rose to high office, becoming Minister of the Right in 899. In 901 he was demoted and sent to Dazaifu in Kyushu, where he died two years later. In the Edo period, images of Michizane hung in the small village schools known as terakoya, and his worship as a god of learning spread. During the Tensho era Toyotomi Hideyoshi held the Great Kitano Tea Ceremony in the pine grove around the shrine, and Kitano has long been a stage for culture.

The National Treasure sanctuary was built in 1607 by Toyotomi Hideyori, carrying out Hideyoshi's last wishes. The main sanctuary, where Michizane is enshrined, is linked to the worship hall by a stone-paved passage called the Ishi-no-ma. A side hall stands to the west of the sanctuary, and music rooms called Gaku-no-ma flank the worship hall. The style is called yatsumune-zukuri or gongen-zukuri, and the cypress-bark roofs cover about 500 tsubo in all. According to the shrine, it is the only shrine building among the many surviving Momoyama structures kept at its original scale, and it became the prototype of the later gongen style. The sanctuary, Ishi-no-ma, worship hall and Gaku-no-ma are designated together as a single National Treasure building.

The buildings are adorned with curved karahafu gables, gleaming golden fittings and fine carvings. Visitors normally pray in front of the worship hall. Those receiving a formal prayer service go up into the worship hall. The middle gate between the tower gate and the sanctuary is the Sanko Gate, an Important Cultural Property bearing a plaque reading Tenmangu written by Emperor Gosai. Its name, meaning three lights, comes from carvings of the sun, the moon and the stars, but the stars are said to be missing, one of the shrine's seven wonders.

In honor of Michizane's love of plum blossoms, about 1,500 plum trees of 50 varieties grow on the grounds. The earliest bloom after New Year, and the season lasts until about the end of March. The Tobiume plum in front of the sanctuary is the only plum allowed to be planted before the deity. The plum garden, Hana no Niwa, usually opens from early February to late March, and the Baikasai plum festival is held on February 25. In autumn, from late October to early December, the shrine opens its maple garden on the west side of the grounds, where part of the Odoi earthen rampart built by Hideyoshi survives, with about 350 maples and a lookout over the sanctuary. The 25th of every month is a fair day associated with Michizane.