Yodohime Shrine

Yodohime Shrine (Yodohime-jinja) is located in Kawakami, Yamato-cho, Saga City, Saga Prefecture, at the gorge where the Kase River (anciently the Kawakami River) emerges from the Sefuri Mountains. It is one of two claimants to ichinomiya status for Hizen Province (alongside Chiriku Hachimangu). The principal deity is Yodohime-no-Mikoto (also Yodohime), recorded by tradition as the younger sister of Empress Jingu in glosses on Nihon Shoki (720 CE) and locally venerated as a water deity of the Kase River. The shrine first appears in Hizen Fudoki (Nara period) as 'Yodohime no Yashiro in Kawakami district' and is listed in Engishiki Jinmyocho (927 CE) as Yodohime-jinja Myojin-Taisha of Saka district, Hizen Province. The great camphor tree at the entrance (estimated over 1,500 years old) is designated a Saga prefectural natural monument. The shrine received patronage from the Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates, the Otomo clan, and during the Edo period from the Nabeshima lords of Saga. The shrine's annual procession (Mikoyuki-sai, lunar August 18) includes a rite of ascending the Kase River by boat, preserving the deity's water-spirit character.