Ikaho Shrine

Ikaho Shrine is situated in Ikaho, Shibukawa, Gunma Prefecture, at approximately 850 metres elevation on the eastern slopes of Mount Haruna, at the topmost point of the famous 365-step stone street that characterises Ikaho hot-spring town. The shrine precincts occupy roughly 2,000 square metres and are integrated with the thermal resort landscape. The place-name 'Ikaho' appears in the *Manyoshu* (*Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves*, 8th c.), where nine poems in the Eastern Dialect section (book 14) reference the ancient locality.

The principal enshrined kami are Ōōnamuchinokami—also known as Ōkuninushi-no-Mikoto—and Sukunahikona-no-Mikoto. According to the *Kojiki* (*Records of Ancient Matters*, 712 CE), Ōōnamuchinokami is a kunitsukami (earthly kami) who advanced the creation of Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni, the central land of reed plains. Sukunahikona-no-Mikoto, depicted in the *Kojiki* as a son of Kamimusubi-no-Kami, collaborated with Ōōnamuchinokami in the land's formation. Both deities have been venerated since antiquity as guardians of medicine and hot springs. Tradition holds that Ikaho worship was originally intertwined with the mountain worship of Mount Haruna's resident kami, and some scholarship suggests that Haruna-no-Kami—a deity within the broader mountain worship framework—may have been the shrine's original principal kami.

According to shrine tradition, the shrine was established in 750 CE as a guardian deity of the hot spring. The *Engishiki* (*Procedures of the Engi Era*, 927 CE) lists it in the *Jinmyocho* (Register of Shrines) as a major shrine (meijin-taisha) of Gunma District, Upper Kōzuke Province, though tradition records that it originally stood at a different location (now the site of Sangu Shrine in Shibukawa). The shrine relocated to its present site during the medieval period as the hot-spring town developed. In the Meiji period, it was designated a prefectural shrine.

The principal annual festivals are the Grand Festival on 18–19 September, the summer festival on 1 July, and the New Year festival on 1 January. The Grand Festival transforms the entire stone-step street into a ritual space, featuring a portable shrine procession and the *yutategi-shinji* (sacred water-boiling rite), in which hot water drawn from the spring source is offered to the kami.