Dazaifu Tenman-gū

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The main gate of the Dazaifu Tenman-gū
Bronze ox in front of the first bridge at the end of the stairway
second bridge to the gate building
The plum tree that Sugawara no Michizane is said to have flown after

The Dazaifu Tenman-gū ( Japanese. 太宰府 天 満 宮 ) is a Shintō shrine and one of the main shrines for the scholar Sugawara no Michizane who was raised to the deity ( Kami ) Tenjin . The shrine is located in Dazaifu on Kyushu Island , the exile in which Sugawara no Michizane died. Along with the Hōfu Tenman-gū in Yamaguchi Prefecture and the Kitano Tenman-gū in Kyoto, it is one of the three most important venues of tenjin.

The main hall of the shrine is said to have been built on his grave by his disciple Umasake no Yasuyuki in 905. According to legend, the cart with Michizane's coffin was pulled by an ox that Yasuyuki led to the funeral. Suddenly the ox stopped and could not be persuaded to move on even by threats and pleading. Therefore Michizane was buried at this point.

In 919 , the Fujiwara family enlarged the building, but it was burned down in the civil wars that followed. The current hall, a building from 1591 in the style of the Azuchi Momoyama period , is registered as an important cultural asset of Japan .

The path to the two-story gate building leads over two arched bridges that span two ponds. The total area of ​​the shrine covers over 12 km² on which over 6,000 Japanese plum trees ( Ume ) in 197 varieties are planted. The most famous of them, the "flying plum tree" ( Tobiume ) stands in the area between the main gate and the main hall. According to tradition, he should have uprooted himself from Kyōto and flown into exile after Sugawara no Michizane. There are also a number of huge camphor trees on the site. The oldest is estimated to be 1,500 years old.

The office of shrine priest has been passed on within the family for 38 generations. The priest of Dazaifu Tenman-gū is also traditionally the priest of the Kamado shrine.

There are two side shrines ( massha ) named Imaō-sha and Tarōsakon-sha on the shrine area, whose deities are not known. There are also numerous other side shrines for relatives and confidants of Michizane: the Kaede-sha ( 楓 社 ) for his wife Kankō Kita-no-kata, the Kankō-sha for his four sons (Takami, Kageyuki, Kaneshige and Fukashige) and his further descendants up to the sixth member, the Oimatsu-sha for Shimada Ason and the Tayū-sha for Watahari-haruohiko-tayū, both of Michizane's two disciples. Further side shrines are u. a. the Sonshi-sha , dedicated to the Buddhist monk Hōjōbō-sonshi, the Kankō-sha (a sessha ) dedicated to the Buddhist nun Kakuju-ni, and the Hinoki-sha, dedicated to the Buddhist nun Iyōmyō-ni . A number of valuable objects are kept in the treasure house ( Hōmotsuden ).

Originally there were also five temples of the Buddhist Tendai school here , which had close ties to the shrine. These were destroyed in the course of the separation of Buddhism and Shinto ( Shinbutsu-Bunri ) in the early Meiji period.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Herbert: Shintô: At the Fountain-head of Japan . Routledge, 2011, ISBN 978-0-203-84216-4 , p. 397
  2. ^ Jean Herbert: Shintô: At the Fountain-head of Japan . Routledge, 2011, ISBN 978-0-203-84216-4 , p. 39

Web links

Commons : Dazaifu Tenman-gū  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 33 ° 31 ′ 17.2 ″  N , 130 ° 32 ′ 6 ″  E