Asama Shrine, Ichinomiya of Kai Province
Asama Shrine in Ichinomiya-chō Ichinomiya, Fuefuki City, Yamanashi Prefecture. The ichinomiya — first-ranking shrine — of Kai Province, deeply venerated since antiquity, enshrining Konohana-no-Sakuya-bime, the principal deity of Mt. Fuji. According to shrine tradition, it was established in the eighth year of Emperor Suinin (22 BCE); originally enshrined on the site of Yamamiya Shrine at the northern foot of Mt. Fuji, it is held to have been relocated to its present site at the southern edge of the Fuefuki-gawa alluvial fan in the wake of the great Jōgan eruption of 865 (Jōgan 7).
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; together with Fuji Omuro Sengen Shrine in Katsuyama and Kawaguchi Asama Shrine in Kawaguchi, it stood at the heart of ancient Kai-region Asama worship. The dispute over identification remains unsettled to this day, but on whichever account, the shrine’s position as a major centre of ancient Kai’s Asama faith is beyond doubt.
The Takeda clan, rulers of Kai in the Sengoku period, held the shrine in deep devotion across the generations. Takeda Nobutora granted shrine lands; Shingen, on his campaign to vanquish the Hōjō, offered a vow to “the great bodhisattva of Asama, the Fuji deity,” pledging that on his victory he would restore the ancestral lands. In 1550 (Tenbun 19) he served as the envoy presenting the Kongo-kondei Hannya Shingyō — the indigo paper, gold-ink Heart Sutra copied in person by Emperor Go-Nara for the peace of the realm — to the shrine; Shingen’s own handwriting still survives on the wrapping. Takeda Katsuyori carried on his father’s resolve, issuing formal documents confirming the shrine’s lands.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, entering Kai after the fall of the Takeda in 1582 (Tenshō 10), issued the shrine a vermilion-seal grant confirming lands of 200 kanmon (later more than 234 koku); successive shogunates renewed it at each accession, and the shrine was protected as a shogunal place of prayer. In the mid-Edo period, even a great phallic kinsei-shin stone was enshrined before the prayer hall — a sign of how the popular currents of Fuji-kō spread through and entwined themselves about the shrine.
In 1871 (Meiji 4), under the nationwide redefinition of shrine ranks, the shrine was raised to the rank of Kokuhei-chūsha — Middle Imperial Shrine. The Meiji separation of Shinto and Buddhism removed the syncretic elements that had long been retained, but the authority as Kai Province’s ichinomiya was kept intact. The April annual festival, Ichinomiya no Taisai, and the rites of yabusame mounted archery continue today, and the shrine remains a beloved hub of local faith.
The photographs show the precincts in the late summer of August: the great stone torii, the random gate viewed beyond it; the chinowa — the ring of woven cogon grass for the Nagoshi no Harae summer purification; the prayer hall from the front; the row of warrior portraits and the old painted plan Saigūchū Asama Jinja no Kei hung within; the torii of an attached shrine; and the simple folk paintings of the zodiac hanging at the temizu-ya purification fountain. Through these various features within the grounds, the unbroken thread of more than two thousand years of rite, and the accumulated weight of the prayers of generations through the Sengoku, the early modern, and the modern era, breathe quietly on.
