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Yoshino Kumano NP, Wakayama
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A Heian-era account describes Kumano’s deities descending here into an ichii tree as 3 moon-shapes. Oyunohara sits on a wooded river island where the Kumano, Otonashi and Iwata rivers meet.
For pilgrims, the final approach to the old shrine meant crossing the Otonashi River on foot. They arrived with wet hems after using the cold water for a last ritual purification.
A written record confirms shrine buildings here by about 1090. A medieval picture scroll, the Ippen Shōnin Eden, preserves the earliest known depiction of the old shrine’s layout.
The 1889 flood swept away most of the island shrine, prompting the surviving halls to move uphill in 1891. In 2011, the old grounds flooded again, with mud piling up to 40 cm deep.
The Otorii at Oyunohara is 33.9 m high and 42 m wide, and weighs 172 tonnes. Completed in 2000, it took about 6 months to make and another 6 months to assemble.
Before the flood, Oyunohara’s roughly 3.6-hectare grounds held 12 shrine sanctuaries in 5 buildings, plus a gate, kagura hall and Noh stage. Their grand cut-stone foundations still remain.
Each April 15, a procession carries the shrine’s kami from the hilltop shrine back to Oyunohara. Children perform dances and a rice-planting rite there, followed by a yamabushi fire ritual.
During the April Yu-nobori rite, boys are believed to host a kami in their heads and must not touch the ground between ceremonies. Their fathers carry them over the Dainichi-goe route to Oyunohara.
Shrine tradition places a turning point in 1274 at the original Hongu: the monk Chishin, later known as Ippen, received a revelation that shaped his teachings. A monument here marks the story, and a memorial is held monthly on the 23rd.
