Kawaguchi Asama Shrine
Kawaguchi Asama Shrine, in Kawaguchi, Fujikawaguchiko, Minamitsuru District, Yamanashi Prefecture. Set on the northern shore of Lake Kawaguchi at the northern foot of Mt. Fuji, it stands as a primal sanctuary of Fuji faith — a site symbolic of the long history in which the volcano’s raging power and the prayers of human beings have intersected.
According to shrine tradition, the shrine was founded in 865 (Jōgan 7), when Tomo-no-Atai Masada enshrined the deity of Mt. Fuji to pacify the great Jōgan eruption of the previous year, 864. It is one of the leading candidates for identification with the meijin taisha “Sengen Shrine” of Yatsushiro District, Kai Province, recorded in the Engishiki Jinmyōchō of 927, and together with Fuji Omuro Sengen Shrine, it stood at the heart of ancient Kai-region Asama worship.
Kawaguchi was a strategic station on the Kai-ji (Misaka Road), the ancient official highway, where the post station of Kawaguchi-eki was sited; it served as the starting point of the pilgrimage path from the Kai provincial seat (around present-day Fuefuki City) crossing the Misaka Pass to Mt. Fuji. From the Kamakura into the Sengoku period it was developed as the Kamakura Highway, and many warriors and ascetics passed along it. Takeda Shingen is recorded to have offered a vow on the safe childbirth of his daughter, pledging the abolition of the trail’s gatehouse barriers — a sign of the devotion that successive local rulers paid to the shrine.
In the Edo period the shrine came to be called “Mt. Fuji’s Northern Main Shrine,” holding the central role in Fuji faith at the mountain’s northern foot. Kawaguchi was also the birthplace of the Mt. Fuji oshi, the pilgrim-priest network; at its peak, more than 140 oshi houses stood here, receiving pilgrims (dōja) gathered from across Japan. The oshi served simultaneously as priests and as innkeepers, and played a great role in the systematic organisation of Fuji-mountain faith as the indispensable intermediaries between the practice of ascetic ascent and the daily life of the community.
Within the grounds is preserved the Mira-ishi, a sacred stone serving as the ancient altar of stone, said to be where Tomo-no-Atai Masada first enshrined the deity of Mt. Fuji. The description in Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku of the eruption-pacifying shrine — “of colour and beauty beyond words” (saishiki birei nishite iu ni katsubekarazu) — is held to be the origin of the stone’s name. Locally it is also called Hiira-ishi, and the belief that stepping onto the stone brings divine retribution has, with awe, preserved it through more than a thousand years.
In 2013, when Mt. Fuji was inscribed as a World Cultural Heritage site under the title “Object of Worship and Wellspring of Art,” Kawaguchi Asama Shrine was included among its constituent components. It is valued both for transmitting an archaic form of volcanic-deity rite — the appeasement of the raging mountain as a god — and for the historical role it played, as the centre on the northern shore of Lake Kawaguchi, in the transformation and expansion of faith from worship from afar (yōhai) to worship by ascent (tōhai).
The photographs show the shrine in early summer green: the stone steps before the zuijinmon gate, the prayer hall, the awe-inspiring interior with its painted ema of Mt. Fuji and ancient framed offerings, the signpost of the Mira-ishi, and the offering box and main hall bearing the inscribed plaque Chinkoku (“Pacifying the Realm”). Within the grove of great trees, the memory of more than twelve hundred years of prayer breathes quietly on.
