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Myōkō-Togakushi Renzan NP, Nagano
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Okusha enshrines Ame-no-Tajikarao, the strongman of Japan’s sun-goddess myth: he pried open the cave where Amaterasu hid. A local origin legend says he flung its stone door down, where it became Mt. Togakushi.
Snow avalanches repeatedly swept away Okusha’s buildings: a wooden shrine was destroyed in 1962, rebuilt in 1964, then swept away again in 1978. The 1979 replacement is reinforced concrete set into bedrock.
戸隠そば began as sacred hospitality: 1709 records from Okunoin list soba-kiri among offerings, and an 1865 festival diary records it on the menu for temple leaders. Later, mountain lodgings served it to visiting pilgrims.
The 500-meter cedar avenue is a planted monument, not untouched forest: planting began during the shrine’s restoration around 1594 and continued into the 1600s. A 1643 rule forbidding tree-cutting on temple grounds helped protect the grove.
Zuishinmon, the thatched gate along Okusha’s approach, was built in 1710—before the shrine became Shinto. It once held Buddhist Niō guardians; after the 1868 separation of Buddhism and Shinto, Shinto guardian figures took their place.
Okusha’s neighboring Kuzuryusha honors a local water deity worshipped before Ame-no-Tajikarao arrived. In a rain-making rite, pilgrims carried water from a mountain pond home without letting it touch the ground, then poured it onto their fields.
Eleven temple lodges once stood along the south side of Okusha’s approach. Excavations also found the foundations of a large lecture hall, likely corresponding to one recorded at Okunoin in 1098; stone terraces and building footings mark the old settlement.
To continue the 400-year-old cedar avenue, caretakers raise replacement seedlings from cuttings of the existing trees. The new saplings are genetic copies, helping preserve the avenue’s living lineage as veteran cedars die.
Beyond the cedar avenue, the protected Okusha grove includes native broadleaf and conifer forest. Nagano City’s cultural-property record notes that about 80 bird species breed in its woods, from woodpeckers to blue-and-white flycatchers.
