Rikitake Kamado Shrine

Rikitake Kamado Shrine

After visiting Nyoirinji Temple, the "Frig Temple" that was number three on the Kyushu pilgrimage I am walking, and the second temple of the day, I carried on roughly SW towards the next temple, and was now walking along the old Nagasaki Highway that connected Nagasaki with Moji.

In the settlement of Rikitake I stopped in at the village shrine which was a branch of Kamado Shrine a little north of here in Dazaifu.

The original Kamado Shrine is said to have been established by Emperor Tenji in 664, on top of the sacred mountain Mount Homan. He moved the political and administrative capital of Kyushu to the base of the mountain, now Dazaifu, as a defensive measure expecting Japan to be attacked by Sila.

More information on his military defeat on the Korean peninsula the year before can be found in some of the posts I did on shrines I visited yesterday further east in Asakura.

Originally it is said he enshrined thousands of kami in Kamado Shrine, though now it is listed as enshrining Tamayorihime, Jingu, and Ojin. A Buddhist priest, Shinren, had a vision of Tamayorihime on Mount Homen a few years after the shrine was originally established.

This branch shrine lists Tamayorihime as the main kami and also lists Yamashita Kagehime and Kora Tamatari, but I can find no information on those two kami.

The shrine did have a small pair of weathered zuijin that were unusual.