Kumano Hayatama Taisha

Kumano Hayatama Taisha is one of the three grand shrines of the Kumano Sanzan. According to old records, the gods of Kumano first descended onto the Gotobiki Rock atop Mount Kamikura before later moving to a newly built shrine on the present site — which was given the name "Shingu", meaning "new shrine". Mount Kamikura, revered since time immemorial, originally had no shrine buildings at all; it stood as a centre of primal nature worship, and fragments of a Yayoi-period bronze bell have been found there. The connection endures today: each October, the shrine's Grand Festival recreates that first shrine, the "cedar temporary shrine", at the sacred resting ground.

The Pilgrimage of Rebirth

With the arrival of Buddhism in the 6th century, Kumano's nature-based faith blended early with Buddhist belief, and devotion to the "Kumano Gongen" spread throughout Japan. The term gongen refers to a deity appearing provisionally in the form of a buddha to save all living beings, and Kumano came to be embraced as a sacred place offering salvation across past, present, and future.

What made Kumano remarkable was its openness. Its gods were believed to extend salvation to everyone without distinction. So many made the difficult journey that a saying arose likening the pilgrims to an endless trail of ants. The Kumano Kodo trails were, in a sense, roads of life, worn by people seeking absolution and salvation through hardship – and those who finally reached the shrine after crossing the steep mountains are said to have wept openly. The journey was understood as a trial that washed the heart clean and restored a person to their true, original self – which is why Kumano is called the land of rebirth, a place to come and receive the strength to live once more.

Treasure Hall

The shrine's treasure hall, the Kumano Shinpokan, holds a remarkable collection of some 1,000 sacred artefacts, all designated National Treasures. Centred on furnishings said to have been dedicated by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in the Muromachi period, the collection includes ancient carved wooden deity figures, lacquered cosmetic boxes worked in gold, delicate painted cypress-wood fans, and finely crafted ornaments – many of them exceptionally rare survivals of medieval craftsmanship.

Kumano shrines are found the length of Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, numbering in the thousands. Between the 10th and 14th centuries, retired emperors and imperial figures made well over a hundred pilgrimages to Kumano; the retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa alone is said to have journeyed there thirty-three times – testament to the extraordinary devotion this remote sacred land inspired.