Fusō-kyō Original Shrine

This is the original shrine of Fusō-kyō in Kamiyoshida, Fujiyoshida. The photos show the August return festival, in which the photographer took part: practitioners in white walk in procession along the cedar-lined approach and take part in rites at the plain wooden shrine building.

Fusō-kyō is a Shinto sect that comes from the Fuji-kō tradition. After the Meiji Restoration, as Shinto and Buddhism were being separated, the oshi of the Yoshida trail are said to have consulted Shishino Nakaba about the future of the Fuji-kō, and this led to its founding. Applications went in through Yamanashi Prefecture on the first day of the ninth month of 1873 (Meiji 6), and on the eighteenth of the same month it was permitted to be established as the Fuji Issan Kōsha; in 1875 (Meiji 8) it became the Fuji Issan Kyōkai and soon after was renamed the Fusō Kyōkai, and in 1882 (Meiji 15) it became independent as Shintō Fusō-kyō, one of the thirteen Shinto sects.

The founder, Shishino Nakaba, was born into a family of rural samurai in Satsuma Province and studied kokugaku and Shinto under Hirata Kanetane. In 1872 (Meiji 5) he joined the Ministry of Religious Instruction, and he later became chief priest of Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha, while also holding priestly posts at Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine in Kamiyoshida, the Asama shrine at Kawaguchi and other shrines. In 1874 (Meiji 7) the Dainichi Hall on the summit was made into the inner shrine of Asama no Ōkami, and in 1875 the Home Ministry approved the renaming of Buddhist place names on the mountain, such as changing Yakushi-ga-take to Kusushi-dake.

In 1876 (Meiji 9) Shishino resigned as chief priest of Sengen Taisha and, as head of the Fusō Kyōkai, leased from Sengen Taisha a plot of one hundred tsubo beside the Kinmeisui spring on the summit. There the Tenpaisho, a place to worship the deities of creation, was built. Fusō-kyō places the three deities of creation at the centre of its faith.

On 26 July 1883 (Meiji 16) Shishino held a ceremony on the summit of Mt. Fuji to report his position as the first head of Fusō-kyō to the deities, but on 12 May of the following year he died at the age of 41. The son who succeeded him was only eight, and for a while Tanaka Yoritsune, head of the Jingūkyō sect, looked after the sect’s affairs. Fusō-kyō took the cherry blossom as the emblem of its teaching and held its spring and autumn grand festivals on the days of the imperial ancestral rites.

A line of practitioners in white moves along the approach through the cedars.