Ise Jingu Geku (Toyo'uke-daijingu) was added to Your Favorites!
Ise-Shima NP, Mie
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Geku’s founding account, recorded in an 804 shrine document, begins with a dream: Amaterasu asks Emperor Yūryaku to bring her food deity, Toyouke, from Tanba to Ise.
Geku’s offerings connect the shrine to its coastal home: Jingu grows rice and about 50 kinds of produce, makes ritual salt at Futami, and obtains seafood from Shima, including abalone from Kuzaki in Toba.
At Geku’s Mikeden, priests present set meals for the kami of both main shrines and their subsidiary shrines every morning and evening. This daily ritual has continued for about 1,500 years.
For the sacred meals, a priest kindles a clean fire with a traditional fire-drill—not an ordinary match or burner. Water is drawn each day from a well inside Geku’s grounds.
At Ise, ceremonies begin at Geku before Naiku, and the customary order of worship follows suit. Toyouke is honored first because she is the deity who oversees Amaterasu’s meals.
In early modern times, about 400 oshi homes stood in Yamada, the town around Geku. These shrine-affiliated guides hosted pilgrims and distributed amulets nationwide; the oshi system was abolished in 1871.
Tsuchinomiya’s land kami was revered as guardian of the Miyagawa River levee, vital to flood-prone Yamada. Among Geku’s subsidiary shrines, Tsuchinomiya alone faces east.
Geku’s Kazenomiya was elevated to subsidiary-shrine rank in 1293 after people credited its wind kami with the “divine winds” said to have driven back Mongol invaders.
Cross Kameishi, then climb 98 stone steps to Takanomiya, Geku’s first-ranked subsidiary shrine. It enshrines Toyouke’s ara-mitama, the kami’s especially powerful, manifest aspect.
Around 8 a.m. on the 1st, 11th, and 21st of each month, Geku’s sacred horse—an imperial gift—pays its respects at the main sanctuary. The shrine notes that the visit may not happen every time.
The open plot beside Geku’s main sanctuary is the same size as the sanctuary site and held the previous building. Every 20 years, the shrine is rebuilt on the neighboring plot and the kami moves there.
