Overview

In Japanese mythology, due to her brother’s disorderly behavior, the Great Sun Goddess Amaterasu hid in the Heavenly Rock House, and the world became pitch black and chaotic. Therefore, the troubled gods held a meeting and a festival of songs and dances to take her out again. Wondering about the bustle, she opened the door slightly, and a god, Ameno Tachikara Ono Mikoto, pushed the rock to welcome her.

There is a legend that the rock fell into the lower world and became Mt. Togakushi. Togakushi literally means “hiding the door”. The Okusha shrine or inner sanctuary of Togakushi Jinja is widely known as a symbol of the cedar avenue. The entire Okusha Forest area has also been protected from development and destruction for nearly 400 years, and the felling of trees in the precincts was strictly prohibited.

In 1973, it was designated as a natural monument of Nagano Prefecture as “preserved as it was in old times”. As a condition of preservation, it’s asked not to enter the ground surface in the forest. This vast shrine is the property of all worshippers and must be protected as the property of the earth. For me, who used to introduce myself as an atheist, this shrine is such a sacred place that I was first convinced that there is a god.