Hananoiwaya-jinja

Hananoiwaya-jinja in Kumano, Mie, stands on the Shichirimihama coast and is recorded in one variant of Nihon Shoki (720 CE) Book One as the site where Izanami no Mikoto, who died bearing the fire deity Kagutsuchi, was buried in "the village of Arima in Kii Province" and where the people offered flowers in season. The main deity is Izanami, with the fire deity Kagutsuchi enshrined alongside in keeping with the burial-site tradition. The shrine has no main hall; instead, a 45-meter rock serves as the deity body, preserving an archaic form of magnetic-rock worship. The site is a component of the UNESCO World Heritage "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range" (2004). The principal rite is the otsuna-kake ceremony on February 2 and October 2, in which a 170-meter rope is stretched from the sacred rock to a pine on the grounds — a Mie prefectural intangible folk cultural property.