Takataki Shrine

Takataki Shrine has long been turned to for safe childbirth, the raising of children, and matchmaking. It enshrines three deities: Ninigi no Mikoto, Tamayorihime no Mikoto and Wakeikazuchi no Mikoto.

Its records reach back a long way. A ninth-century national history notes the shrine receiving court rank in 868, and tradition places its founding earlier still, in the late seventh century. Tokugawa Ieyasu granted it land in 1591, and the present shrine buildings date from 1727.

The shrine's most distinctive custom is the soko-nashi-bukuro, the bottomless bag - found here and nowhere else. Expectant mothers borrow one and wear it wrapped around the belly together with a charm for safe delivery. After the birth, they make a new bag and offer it to the shrine, keeping the borrowed one.

The shrine keeps a full calendar of observances through the year, but two draw visitors from well beyond the parish. Both fall on a Sunday, one in April and one in October.

The spring festival is known as the "Bride Festival". Women who married into local families during the preceding year come to the shrine in wedding dress, accompanied by their husbands, to report the marriage to the deity and pray for children and for the wellbeing of their households. At the same time, children process in Heian-period costume.

The autumn festival is the men's counterpart, known as the "Fighting Festival". It opens with yabusame, mounted archery, the arrows that strike the target read as a divination of the coming harvest. Then three portable shrines are brought out, one from each of the surrounding parishes, and carried down the stone steps in procession. The name comes from what happens along the way, as the bearers drive the shrines hard against one another.