Udo Jingu

Udo Shrine stands on the coast at Nichinan, on a headland above the Hyuga Sea. Its main hall is built inside a cave in the cliff, on the spot where the god of the shrine, Ugayafukiaezu, is said to have been born.

The shrine is said to date from the reign of Emperor Sujin. In 782 a monk named Kokibo Kaikyu was appointed by imperial order to take charge of it. He rebuilt the hall and founded a temple beside it, and for centuries afterwards the two stood together: the temple held six images of Kannon, and the place was known as the Koya of the west, after the great temple complex at Koyasan.

The temple was dissolved at the Meiji Restoration, when Buddhist and Shinto institutions were separated by law, and what remained became the shrine of today.

The hall is painted vermilion and stands under the roof of the cave. Five further gods are enshrined with the main one. The building has been repaired many times since the eighth century, most recently in 1968 and 1997, and is a Cultural Property of the prefecture.

At the back of the cave is the rock called Ochichi-iwa, the breast rock. Toyotama-hime, the mother of Ugayafukiaezu, is said to have left her breasts fixed to the cave wall so that her child could be fed after she departed. Water still drips from it, and it is a place of prayer for safe birth and for the raising of children. A sweet is made from the water and sold at the shrine.

Below the hall, out on the rocks, lies the Kameishi, a stone about eight metres long said to be the turtle Toyotama-hime rode to come ashore. There is a square hollow in its back. Visitors throw clay balls at it, men with the left hand and women with the right, and a ball that lands in the hollow is said to carry the wish with it.
The shore itself is layered sandstone and mudstone, tilted and worn into ridges by the sea. Rock of this kind along the Miyazaki coast is known as the devil's washboard.