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Daisen-Oki NP, Tottori
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The gate at the end of the approach has its latch on the “wrong” side. It was once the entrance gate of Saigakuin temple; when moved here, it was installed without being turned—hence its nickname, the Backwards Gate.
The shrine’s octagonal mikoshi stands 3.2 m tall and weighs 1 ton; it reportedly took 450 bearers to carry. Daisen’s grand procession ended in 1885, and the shrine’s portable sanctuary was restored in 2002.
Rebuilt in 1805 under Kyoto master carpenter Miwa Heita, the shrine links its sanctuary, offering hall and worship hall into one complex, with side wings spanning about 50 m. The shrine says how it was built on this steep site remains unknown.
The roughly 700 m stone path, often called Japan’s longest natural-stone approach, dates to Daisen’s flourishing cattle-and-horse fairs. It once led to the mountain temple’s Daichimyō Gongen sanctuary and Saigakuin, not just today’s shrine.
Daisen okowa became handy food for pilgrims: sticky rice steamed with mountain greens, bamboo shoots and chestnuts made a filling meal that kept well on the journey. This local specialty still carries a taste of the old pilgrimage routes.
This building was once the principal sanctuary of Daisenji, enshrining Daichimyō Gongen in a Buddhist-Shinto tradition. After the Meiji-era separation of Buddhism and Shinto, Buddhist images were removed and the sanctuary became the Shinto Okumiya in 1875.
Heavy winter snow once made service at the mountain shrine difficult, so a winter shrine was established at Maruyama, about 8 km downhill, while summer rites continued here. The old winter-shrine site is still known as Ōgamidani.
Look up inside the shrine’s offering hall: its coffered ceiling holds 234 paintings. Alongside flowers and birds, they include people and animals—tiny glimpses of everyday life when the hall was built in the early 19th century.
The pillars’ “byakudan-nuri” finish gets its coppery color from an unexpected recipe: silver leaf covered with clear lacquer. The shrine describes this unusually large-scale use of the technique as Japan’s largest.
At the July Mohitori rite, shrine attendants climb to Daisen’s summit pond before dawn to collect sacred water and medicinal herbs, then bring them back to the Okumiya. The old word “mo,” meaning water, survives in the rite’s name.
An earlier form of the summit rite was a demanding Buddhist practice called Misen Zenjō. Monks copied the Lotus Sutra, placed the writing in a tube in the summit pond, and retrieved the previous year’s scroll on their next pilgrimage.
“Ōgamiyama,” the shrine’s name, is an older name for Mount Daisen. The 8th-century Izumo Fudoki records the mountain as Ōgamidake, and the Okumiya enshrines Ōnamuchi, also known as Ōkuninushi.
The Okumiya’s spring festival is listed for May 24 and includes a “fortune-welcoming” rite. Its fuku-mochi rice cakes are scattered among worshippers—a cheerful local tradition in which good fortune comes in a very shareable form.
The affiliated Shimoyama Shrine honors Watanabe Terumasa. The shrine’s history says he was killed on his way home from worship here in 1330; people first built a small shrine at the place he died, before it was later moved beside the Okumiya.
