Famous Shrines and Shrine Networks
Those worshiped at a shrine are generally Shinto kami, but sometimes they can be Buddhist or Taoist deities, as well as others not generally considered to belong to Shinto. Some shrines were established to worship living people or figures from myths and legends. A famous example are the Tōshō-gū shrines erected to enshrine Tokugawa Ieyasu, or the many shrines dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane, like Kitano Tenman-gū.
Often the shrines historically most significant do not lie in a former center of power like Kyoto, Nara or Kamakura. For example Ise Shrine, the Imperial household's family shrine, is in Mie prefecture. Izumo-taisha, one of the oldest and most revered shrines in Japan, is in Shimane prefecture. This is because their location is that of a traditionally important kami, and not that of temporal institutions.
Some shrines exist only in one locality, while others are at the head of a network of branch shrines (分社, bunsha?) that extends to all the country. The spreading of a kami can be due to one or more of several different mechanisms. The normal one is an operation called kanjō (see the Re-enshrinement section above), a propagation process through which a kami is invited to a new location and there re-enshrined. The new shrine is administratively completely independent from the one it originated from.
However, other transfer mechanisms exist. In Ise Shrine's case, for example, its network of Shinmei shrines (from Shinmei (神明?), another name for Amaterasu) grew due to two concurrent causes. During the late Heian period the cult of Amaterasu, worshiped initially only at Ise Shrine, started to spread to the shrine's possessions through the usual kanjō mechanism. Later, branches shrines started to appear further away. The first evidence of a Shinmei shrine far from Ise is given by the Azuma Kagami, a Kamakura period text which refers to Amanawa Shinmei-gū's appearance in Kamakura, Kanagawa. Amaterasu began being worshiped in other parts of the country also because of the so-called tobi shinmei (飛び神明, flying Shinmei?) phenomenon, the belief that she would fly to other locations and settle there. Similar mechanisms have been responsible for the spreading around the country of other kami.
Read more about this topic: Shinto Shrines
Famous quotes containing the words famous, shrines, shrine and/or networks:
“Many famous feet have trod
Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed
The strength they have against the strength they need;
And famous lips interrogated God
Concerning franchise in eternity....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“I don’t care very much for literary shrines and haunts ... I knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard. And when I said, “Why throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard?” she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)
“The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“The community and family networks which helped sustain earlier generations have become scarcer for growing numbers of young parents. Those who lack links to these traditional sources of support are hard-pressed to find other resources, given the emphasis in our society on providing treatment services, rather than preventive services and support for health maintenance and well-being.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)