Togakushi Shrine

Togakushi is five separate shrines spread over several kilometres and several hundred metres of height on the flank of Mount Togakushi, whose jagged rock ridge is read in myth as the door that was thrown from the cave where the sun deity hid. The walk between them, on the old pilgrim path through forest, is the visit. The set piece is the approach to Okusha, the innermost shrine: a level track of about two kilometres that passes through a thatched gate and then runs for four hundred metres between two rows of cryptomeria planted around four hundred years ago, trunks two metres across, arching over the path. Beyond it the track climbs steeply to the shrine under the cliff. Togakushi was a Shugendo centre and later associated with a ninja tradition, which the local museum covers. The village is known for soba grown on the volcanic soil.

History

One tradition dates the upper shrine, the Okusha, to 210 BC, while Buddhist tradition says a monk named Gakumon found the site and began Shugendō practice here in 849. For centuries Togakushi was a pilgrimage centre ranked with Ise, Kōya-san and Enryaku-ji, and it was changed from a temple into a shrine under the Meiji separation of Buddhism and Shinto in 1868 (Wikipedia, Togakushi Shrine).

Highlights

• The cedar avenue - four hundred metres between rows of four-hundred-year-old trees.
• Five shrines - strung up the mountain and linked by the old pilgrim path.
• The thatched gate - Zuishinmon, halfway along the Okusha approach.
• Togakushi soba - buckwheat grown on the volcanic soil of the plateau.

When to go

May to November; late October for colour. A day to walk between the shrines.

Good to know

The last climb to Okusha is steep, rough and often wet. Snow closes the upper path from December and access is by snowshoe. Buses from Nagano are infrequent and the last one back is early. Soba restaurants close in the afternoon.

Nearby

Zenkoji is south in Nagano city; Nozawa Onsen is north-east.

Key facts