Hokkaido Jingu Shrine（北海道神宮）

Name plate "Hokkaido Jingu"

Hokkaido, the northern island in Japan's archipelago, is a now famous place for sightseeing; tasty foods, great nature, and so on. Especially, winter-sports lovers may enjoy skiing/snowboarding in winter.

Thinking of its history, Hokkaido used to be a different nation; it was an Ainus land.  However, the Emperor Mutsuhito (The Meiji Emperor) sent commissioners to develop the land. Interestingly, he used sort of a "religious" power to protect  his land or its sovereignty in the island by building a Shinto shrine. The shrine is now called "Hokkaido Jingu"（北海道神宮）.



Background
Shintoism became a nation-controlled religion, of which religious leader or "the living deity" (ie. the Dalai Lama for Buddhism, the Pope for Christianity) was the Emperor after the imperial court regained its political supremacy from Samurai (Tokugawa Shogunate) for the first time in the past 1,000 years.  Shinto Shrines were subsidized by the government to maintain its services and a ministerial department to control the national religion was established in the government (Jingi-kan/神祇官：Department of Divinities）.

Main building

For Hokkaido, the imperial court and head of the department chose a deity called "Oo-kunu-nushi"（大国主:the great founder）, who is said to have developed the land of Japan and become the first official ruler of Japan before a divine ancestoer of the current chrysanthemum family took over the ruling status. Mutsuhito took this mythological story as a good example to develop Hokkaido and accepted this deity to be enshrined as Hokkaido's spiritual guard.

(For more information about Oo-kuni-nushi, you can refer to my previous article.)

 
Spirit Separation（勧請）
In a religious way, Japanese deity can split their spirits and/or change its form whatever they want. The separated spirit  is "Wake-mitama"（or Bun-rei/分霊) and it appears through a religious process called  "Kan-jo"（勧請）. In most cases, people use an object in which they believe the spirit is summoned and place it on the shrine's alter for worship.

Now, you may find the reason why there are many shrines having same deities throughout Japan. There is a headquarter shrine of a deity where its "mother spirit" is enshrined and the "child spirits" separated from the mother are located in various shrines in Japan.

For Hokkaido, members of commissionaires held a religious ceremony for separating a part of Oo-kuni-nusi spirit from its mother body picked up a mirror as its "summoned object"

Shima's statue in the shrine

A long way to go
A cheif of Hokkaido commissionaires brought it on a ocean vessel to Hakodate in the south of Hokkaido. Then, they had to go inward to understand the whole geography in Hokkaido but it was a risky task since they did not have automobiles to go in a heavy-snowing environment: they had to walk.

Yoshitake Shima（島義勇：1822-1874）, a high commissionaire of Hokkaido took the duty. He kept the mirror and went on a journey. After three-month journey, he arrived in Sapporo, the municipal capital in Hokkaido, and placed the mirror in an interim building of shrine. In 1871, the interim building became Sapporo Shrine officially.


Gained the title of "Jingu"
The name of Jingu （神宮：Deity's palace) is used only to shrines having deities in a direct line to the imperial throne including successive Emperors in history.  The shrine was approved to use "Jingu" name in 1964 after the Emperor Mutshuhito's spirit was added to the main alter for worship. Since then, the shrine has been called "Hokkaido Jingu" and attracted worships from local people.