Onokoro Jinja Shrine（おのころ神社）

Izanagi and Izanami
Retrieved on 2012/7/14
from Wikipedia

When talking about how Japan was created, you can read Kuniumi Shinwa (A myth about creation of a country) which appears in Kojiki（古事記）, the first series of in-writing history books in Japan edited 1,300 years ago. The story is about  the very first moment of creation of Japan as follows;


Once upon a time, great divinities assigned its subordinates Izanagi and Izanami to create the land of Japan. Upon this assignment, Izanagi (Father-god)and Izanami　(Mother-goddess)  plunged a heavenly pike bestowed by the great devinities into a chaotic ocean and scrambled it . When they pulled up the pike from the ocean, water-drops dropped from the pike's edge into the ocean. Those drops congealed them selves and became the first island of Japan  (Onokoro - Island) was created.The two deities settled in the island and got married, then they created other eight islands of Japan and numerous numbers of Japanese deities from the island.







Nushima-Island（沼島）,  a small island located in south-east from Awajishima-island, Hyogo,  of which demensions are 2.71 km², where only about 600 people are living, is ledendarily the first island created by the water drop, where the two deities settled firstly.  Though there are some arguments, Nushima has been strongly believed as the first one because of the island's local religion (local people had worshiped the two deities by building a shrine, having a ritual and so foth even before the other candidates emerged by academic discussions among scholors).  


After a 10-minute ferry transport from Habu port in south in Awajishima-Island,  the kind sea wind with birds' warbling welcomed me. There were fishing boats anchored in the port as Nushima's main industry is fishery. There are no 24-hour convenience stores, supermarkets, and shopping malls. People are friendly to say hello to me with smiles, though it rarely happnes in skyscraper-walled city where I live. At the very fisrst moment,  I felt the time stopped in the island; nostalgic.


My friends and I went to a shrine where the two deities are enshrined. The shrine is on a small hill and it took us 10-20 minutes on foot from the port to the shrine's entrance. As we approached, we began to feel something is different.

The shrine called Onokoro-shirine is the center of local people's faith but it is usually unmanned (well maintained by a local ladies' association periodically). Therefore, at the first glance, it looked clean and sharp but a bit dreary. Well, Japan's shintoism isn't an idolarty, so generally there are no statues/objects of enshirined deities in Japanese shrines. All we need is to keep worships to the deities, therefore there won't be any needs to have eye-opening decorations/ornaments in the shrines. 

From the entrance of shrine

The main building (alter)

The Stone Statue

However, there is a stone statue of the two deities in the shrine in order for local people to show their respects in more vivid way. The statue shows the very moment that the two deities created the Onokoro Island (A male god on the left holds the pike and plunges it down). Because of the statue's exposure to wind and rain, it got coated, but its divinity remains still.



According to the shrine's history displayed there, though there is a hall for worshiping the enshirined existence in the shrine, its spirit itself is laid down on the hill itself; when you are in the shrine, you are standing on spirits of the two deities for Japan-birthing. If you are not biased with spirituality, you may feel warmth from the ground and its energy runs up throughout your body from the foot to the head. Even if you are not that spiritual,  you easily feel chilled up  right after your entrance into the shrine. You may feel that the air suddenly changes compared to the base of the hill and you may simply feel it's a sacred place.