Sakaebashi Inari Shrine

This Inari shrine stands on high ground beside a road in Fujinomiya (the old Ōmiya district). A stone pillar is carved “Sakaebashi Inari Jinja”, and a vermilion torii and the main hall stand on top of a stone wall.

Ōmiya was the shrine town of Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha and also a post town on the road linking Suruga and Kai. In 1566 (Eiroku 9), in the Sengoku period, Imagawa Ujizane made the Fuji Ōmiya Rokudo-ichi, a market held six times a month before the Sengen shrine’s gate, a free market, and in 1580 (Tenshō 8) the Takeda opened a new market in Ōmiya’s Nishi-machi.

In the Edo period Ōmiya was divided by the Kanda River, with the Sengen shrine’s lands to the west and land under the shogunate’s intendant to the east, and until the Meiji Restoration it was split into two towns, Renjaku and Aoyagi, and Kanda and Nakajuku. Many merchants came from other provinces; Yamanaka of the Nakaya, who began brewing sake in 1834 (Tenpō 5), is said to have come from Hino in Ōmi. In the late Edo period the area around Ōmiya was known for its hanshi paper and Fuji tobacco.

Little is recorded of the shrine’s origins, but it seems to be an Inari shrine worshipped in this merchant town.