Tokorozawa Shinmeisha

Tokorozawa Shinmeisha (Tokorozawa Shinmei-sha) stands in Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture, as the tutelary of the Tokorozawa community and a local Ise-lineage shrine within the network of shinmeisha derived from the medieval and early-modern diffusion of Ise belief. The main enshrined deity is Amaterasu-Omikami of Ise Jingu Naiku, recorded in the Kojiki (712 CE) and the Nihon Shoki (720 CE) as the imperial ancestral deity. According to shrine tradition, the shrine was founded in the medieval period as a settlement Ise-branch sanctuary by transferring the deity of Ise Jingu, and the precinct has been maintained by the local community through the early modern period. It was designated a village shrine in the Meiji era. The shrine is known as the place where the first manned glider flight in Japan was offered prayers in 1911, prior to its successful trial at the Tokorozawa airfield, marking the shrine's connection to early Japanese aviation.