Usa Shrine

Usa Shrine is the head shrine of all the shrines of Hachiman. Of the hundred and ten thousand or so shrines in Japan, more than forty thousand are Hachiman shrines, the largest group of them all. The main halls are a National Treasure and stand in forest that has never been cut.

Hachiman, who is the spirit of the emperor Ojin, is said to have first shown himself at Usa in 571. In 725 a hall was built for him on the present site by imperial command, and that is the founding of the shrine.

A second hall followed in 733, for Hime Okami. She was here first: the Nihon Shoki has her coming down to the island of Usa in the age of the gods, and she was worshipped as the deity of the ground before Hachiman appeared.

The third hall was built in 823, for Empress Jingu, who was Ojin's mother. She is prayed to for safe birth and for the raising and teaching of children.

Ojin is remembered as the emperor who brought in learning and industry from the mainland. The belief that grew around him joined the worship of that emperor to Buddhist ideas and to older native practice, and it spread further than any other.

Two things made the shrine's name. Hachiman was held to have supported the casting of the Great Buddha at Todaiji in Nara, and an oracle given here to the imperial envoy Wake no Kiyomaro settled a question about how the country should be governed.