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Chichibu-Tama-Kai NP, Tokyo
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At Musashi Mitake, “yabusame” has no horses: this September rite is staged by firelight as ritual, not sport. A wooden target piece is taken home; eating grilled fish from it is said to bring a year of good health.
On January 3, priests heat a stag’s shoulder blade and read its cracks to forecast 25 crops, from rice and millet to potatoes and carrots. The shrine says its rite is one of only 2 Japanese shrines’ deer-bone divinations.
Priest-run lodges on the mountain serve handmade sashimi konnyaku, each household with its own yuzu or seaweed twist. Rice, sake and vegetables first offered at the shrine are also shared with lodges—so diners enjoy the same offerings as the kami.
The shrine’s National Treasure armor weighs about 26 kg, and its brightest red lacing is original 12th-century silk. The paler strands are replacements from 1903: the supposedly faded sections actually preserve the older color.
A Kamakura-period National Treasure saddle retains its stirrups, bit and all 3 straps that secured it to a horse. The shrine describes this complete medieval cavalry set as Japan’s only example of its kind; its shell inlay shimmers with mother-of-pearl.
The shrine’s “Hojumaru” sword was traditionally said to have been offered by warrior Hatakeyama Shigetada in 1191. But the blade bears the era name 1324–1326—more than 120 years after Shigetada’s death in 1205.
Local legend says a white wolf led Yamato Takeru through fog on Mt. Mitake and became the mountain’s guardian. Wolves were feared, yet farmers also valued them for hunting animals that damaged crops.
At Ome City Local History Museum—not at the shrine—a well-preserved Japanese wolf skull linked to Musashi Mitake’s worship is kept with prayer beads. A woodblock used to print the shrine’s protective talismans is dated 1819.
The shrine’s wolf talismans have crescent moons for eyes. The design links Musashi Mitake to a poetic “snow, moon, flowers” trio: Kiso Ontake is the snow, this shrine the moon, and Kanazakura Shrine the flowers.
The bronze komainu inside the main sanctuary are wolves, not the more usual lion-dogs, and date to 1783. The larger statues outside are a separate pair, donated in 1985 and made by Kitamura Seibo, sculptor of Nagasaki’s Peace Statue.
In 1606, Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the shrine’s south-facing sanctuary turned east to serve as Edo’s western guardian. It still faces toward Tokyo, and Ieyasu himself is enshrined here in the small Toshōsha.
Daidai Kagura came from Edo in 1749 and 1780, then stayed in the family: 31 hereditary shrine households have passed it down for generations. The dances face the kami as offerings, not simply as entertainment for an audience.
Edo-era Mitake pilgrim groups did more than worship: visitors from distant villages exchanged rice varieties suited to drought, typhoons and pests. The shrine’s oshi guides still welcome returning groups and carry protective talismans to their communities.
The shrine’s Hinode Festival began as a sunrise rite for Shugendo practitioners; today it is held on April 29. Priests, armored warriors and worshippers carry the mikoshi through the oshi village and up more than 300 stone steps.
The small Tokiwa Kakiwa Shrine was once Musashi Mitake’s main sanctuary. Built in 1511, it was moved when the current main hall was built; today it enshrines 87 deities, including kami of Japan’s provincial first shrines.
A small shrine to the soil deity preserves a farming belief: sacred earth taken from around it was sprinkled on fields to ward off insects. A stone poem erected at the site in 1887 celebrates the protective power of the mountain’s soil.
One treasure is a gold-bright, 13th-century sword known as “Gongen’s Sword.” It was regarded as a stand-in for the Buddhist mountain deity Zao Gongen, and shrine tradition says it was sacred—not a weapon to be drawn.
The shrine’s earliest dated record tells of the monk Gyoki enshrining Zao Gongen here in 736 to pray for the protection of eastern Japan. For centuries, the mountain was both a sacred shrine site and a center of Buddhist-Shinto mountain practice.
