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Yoshino Kumano NP, Wakayama
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Each February 6, white-clad men race down Kamikura’s 538 steps carrying sacred flames. Shingu’s song calls it a “fire waterfall, descending dragon”; in 2016, the rite became an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.
In 1956, repairs near Gotobiki-iwa uncovered 22 fragments of a bronze bell dating to the late Yayoi period. The discovery hints that this dramatic cliff was a sacred place long before the shrine’s recorded stories.
Kamikura is remembered as the old sacred home of the Kumano kami; tradition says they later moved to the shrine at the mountain’s foot, Kumano Hayatama Taisha. That newer sanctuary gave Shingu its name: “New Palace.”
Gotobiki-iwa rises about 11 metres and looks, to local eyes, like a giant toad: “gotobiki” means toad in the Kumano dialect. Its rounded form is natural, shaped as volcanic rock weathered over time.
Kamikura enshrines Takakuraji, a figure in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. In the legend, a divine dream led him to bring the sword Futsunomitama to the future Emperor Jimmu when he faced danger in Kumano.
The famous torch-run had a homely purpose: participants carried sacred New Year fire back to their families. The flame was used at household altars and hearths to welcome the deity and begin the year anew.
Before the fire festival, a local agricultural group donates about 200 kilograms of rice straw. Volunteers braid it into a roughly 30-metre sacred rope and wrap it around Gotobiki-iwa—a striking offering made by hand.
A stone marker by the shrine entrance records a donation in 1672 by a visitor from Ōshū, in northeastern Japan, who had made the Kumano pilgrimage 7 times. It’s a small, enduring record of one traveler’s devotion.
Local tradition credits warrior Minamoto no Yoritomo with donating Kamikura’s 538-step stone approach in 1193. Its rough, natural-stone construction is called “Kamakura-zumi”—a medieval story visitors can follow step by step.
