Yokoyama Hachimangu

Yokoyama Hachimangu is located in Yokomachi, Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, on a small hill on the south bank of the Hei River near its mouth in Miyako Bay along the Sanriku coast. The principal deity is Homuda-wake-no-Mikoto (Emperor Ojin), following the regional Hachiman tradition traceable to Usa Jingu in Buzen Province (present-day Oita). Shrine tradition records that the shrine began as a guardian of Miyako Bay in antiquity and that the Hachiman deity was invited in the Heian period, though the earliest reliable documentary attestation appears in early-modern gazetteers of the Nanbu domain. The shrine was ranked as a village shrine in the Meiji era and continues to be maintained by local parishioners alongside the fishing port of Miyako.