Introduction
For those of us who live to eat, food is never far from our minds. Pity the poor sod who openly declares that they would rather subsist on Soylent or an IV drip! While everyone is entitled to live however they please — with the usual caveats of doing no harm to others — a life where food is an afterthought seems like a particularly joyless existence.
Past articles have introduced a number of culinary shrines across Japan that celebrate and give thanks to all kinds of food and drink, including pickles, sweet potatoes, salmon, ice, sake, and more. Today’s shrines are dedicated to some of the most fundamental components of Japanese cuisine, like salt, seaweed, and miso. That being said, I’m still waiting for someone to establish a shrine to natto (fermented soybeans) — ‘tis only surprising that one doesn’t exist at the time of writing.
Salt
Many cultures and religions across the world use salt in purifying rituals; Japan is no different in that respect. Salt is used to cleanse the body or an area, such as when sumo wrestlers sprinkle salt around the fighting area before a match, or when a piece of land is purified prior to any construction. Restaurants often place small heaps of salt at their entrances to attract customers and ward off evil.
Given the importance of salt, it is a little surprising that there aren't many Shinto shrines that have salt or the salt deity as their focus. One institution that has held salt and the salt deity in reverence for many centuries is Shiogama Shrine, whose name means ‘Salt Cauldron.'
Located in Miyagi Prefecture, this hilltop shrine venerates Shiotsuchi-no-oji, the deity of salt and the sea who is believed to have taught people how to make salt. ‘Shiotsuchi’ means ‘spirit/master of the tides’ or ‘way of the tides,’ so some also consider him to be a deity presiding over tidal currents, navigation, and maritime safety.
The apotheosis of salt celebration takes place every year in early July at Okama Shrine, one of Shiogama’s subordinate shrines, in the moshioyaki shinji ritual — supposedly the only folk ritual of its kind still practiced in Japan. This salt-making ritual takes place over three days, and involves making salt by boiling seawater and seaweed gathered from the waters in nearby Shichigahama in four large sacred iron cauldrons. The divine salt is then offered to the gods at Shiogama Shrine during their annual ‘reisai’ (special festival).
There is at least one other Shiogama Shrine (Nagoya, Aichi) that venerates the deity above. Bamboo craftspeople once prayed to him at Kagoso Shrine (now subsumed into Kanda Myojin in Tokyo) on the basis of the myth of Umisachi and Yamasachi, where he crafted a tightly woven basket (or boat) for legendary figure Hoori, and instructed him to let the tides guide him to the palace of the sea deity. During the Edo period, however, Shiotsuchi-no-oji was sometimes considered to be the same personage as other deities such as Sarutahiko, Okitama, and Kunado-no-kami, so it’s entirely possible that there are in fact more shrines that venerate this deity.
Fun fact: ‘Shiogama’ also refers to a beloved Shiogama City confection of the same name. This is a dry sweet in the ‘rakugan’ style that’s often used in tea ceremony, made by steaming and drying glutinous rice flour, mixing it with wasanbon sugar, pressing it into a mould, and sprinkling crushed green shiso on top.
Sugar
Sugar was first introduced to Japan by Chinese traders during the eighth century, but it wasn’t until the mid-1500s that the sweet stuff became more widely available, thanks to trade with the Portuguese. This probably accounts for the dearth of shrines that celebrate sugar.
There is one, however, that venerates two historical figures responsible for making great strides in the production of fine wasanbon sugar — the modest Koura Shrine in Higashikagawa City, Kagawa Prefecture.
The story behind their deification is one of toil and hardship, and begins in the late 1700s with a man named Sakiyama Shūkei. At this time, sugar production was only available to those with access to large amounts of capital, such as feudal lords and wealthy merchants; the majority of sugar used at the time was imported. Ikeda Genjō, who was Shūkei’s mentor and domain physician of Sanuki Province, was convinced that cultivating sugarcane and producing sugar would benefit Japan tremendously.
On Genjō’s death, Shūkei took it upon himself to continue his mentor’s research, but met with little success for a decade. A chance encounter with a medical student from the Satsuma Domain, followed by several incidents, allowed Shūkei to learn their secret sugar-making techniques. However, theory and practice proved difficult to reconcile, and he was unable to successfully make sugar.
Then came another chance encounter with Seki Ryōsuke, a traveller from the Satsuma Domain. Ryōsuke had suddenly fallen ill during his travels on Shikoku while on a pilgrimage of the 88 temples. Shūkei and his elder brother hosted him for four or five days until he recovered and regained his strength.
Even after returning to Satsuma, Ryōsuke was unable to forget the brothers who had nursed him back to health, and felt deeply indebted to them. Recalling that Shūkei had expressed an earnest desire for superior sugarcane seeds, Ryōsuke, in defiance of strict domain laws that forbade sharing sugar-related knowedge and goods with outsiders, took it upon himself to travel back to Sanuki Province and hand-deliver sugarcane seedlings — carefully hidden in a lunchbox woven from willow twigs — to Shūkei. (That Ryōsuke was from the Amami Islands, whose inhabitants had suffered greatly under the Satsuma Domain because of sugarcane, might have played a part.)
Armed with Satsuma’s sugarcane seedlings, Shūkei managed to develop a unique method for producing fine white sugar, and in 1803 presented the fruits of his labours to his feudal lord, Yoriyoshi. Afterwards, he travelled throughout the domain instructing famers in cultivation and sugar-refining techniques.
Although Sanuki’s white sugar was received with great acclaim in major cities such as Osaka, generating much-needed revenue for the Takamatsu Domain, their sugar industry would struggle for several decades due to natural disasters and a lack of capital and labour. The introduction of protective measures in 1825 finally allowed the sugar industry to flourish, with production peaking in the 1850s. While imports of foreign sugar led to the decline of Sanuki’s sugar industry, parts of the region still produces high-quality wasanbon today.
To honour Shūkei and Ryōsuke’s contributions to sugar production, Koura Shrine was established to enshrine both of them. The name of the shrine is a combination of kanji taken from both their names — 向 from Sakiyama and 良from Ryōsuke — and local residents affectionately refer to the shrine as ‘Satogami-san’ or ‘Lord God of Sugar.’
Seaweed
Here’s another crucial component of Japanese cuisine that seems strangely under-appreciated at shrines. For example, there is a Kombu Shrine in Hokkaido, but it seems to have nothing to do with kelp. That being said, Mekari Shrine in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka, makes up for all that with the Mekari Shinji, a fascinating seaweed gathering and cutting ceremony that has taken place on the lunar New Year’s Day for a putative 1900-odd years.
The shrine’s name translates to ‘cutting wakame seaweed,’ so the mekari ritual is about as true to its name as it gets. The origins of the rite stem from a tale in which the lesser sea deity Azumi no Isora presents the jewels of the tides after Empress Jingūreturns from a successful invasion of the Three Kingdoms (the Korean Peninsula); she had the shrine built to express her gratitude to the gods for her military victory. Noh enthusiasts might also be familiar with ‘mekari’ as the name of a slightly obscure play of the same name by the playwright Zenchiku, which dramatizes this ritual cutting of seaweed.
Preparation for the ritual begins several days before the ceremony. Then, in the early morning hours of lunar New Year’s Day, when the tide is still low, three priests venture out into the waters to harvest wakame with a scythe by the light of blazing pine torches. The wakame is later offered to the deities on the same day.
Mekari rites are held at two other shrines in Japan: Sumiyoshi Shrine in Shimonoseki City, Yamaguchi; and Kumano Shrine, a branch shrine of Hinomisaki Shrine in the coastal town of Uryu, Shimane.
The mekari rite at Sumiyoshi Shrine is a little more involved than that of Mekari Shrine’s, with a component where food is offered to the sea deities and special mochi toasted and eaten before the harvesting of wakame can take place. Interestingly, the shrine itself is located quite far inland, which makes one wonder if the sea once extended all the way here centuries ago.
Kumano Shrine’s ritual supposedly dates back to the sixth year of Emperor Seimu’s reign. Early on the morning of the fifth day of the first month, a black-tailed seagull flew to Hinomisaki Shrine three times and left some seaweed on the parapet. The priest decided to clean and dry the seaweed, which turned out to be edible wakame.
Today, the rite entails building a boat bridge that stretches 60 metres from the shore to Gongen Island, using 12 boats — one for each month. The priest makes their way to the island on this makeshift bridge to harvest fresh wakame there.
Seaweed harvesting rituals aside, Sumiyoshi Shrine in Uto, Kumamoto, has a monument that celebrates Kathleen Drew-Baker, the ‘Mother of Seaweed Farming.’ She was a British botanist whose academic research on laver’s reproductive system spurred marine biologists in Japan to apply her findings to nori, which until the mid-twentieth century had been difficult to reliably cultivate at scale.
Artificial seeding techniques building on her work led to increased commercial seaweed production, bolstering the industry as a whole. Drew-Baker never did manage to visit Japan in her lifetime, but the ‘Drew Festival’ has been celebrated in this town on 14 April every year since 1953.
Miso
In the heart of downtown Kumamoto City is the country’s (purported) sole shrine dedicated to miso — Miso Tenjin.
According to shrine lore, Miso Tenjin (official name: Honmura Shrine) was established in 713. Like many old shrines, its origin story should probably be taken with a pinch of salt (or miso, in this case). The shrine had originally been established to enshrine a deity of medicine, also named Miso Tenjin (but written with different characters 御祖天神), in the hopes of quelling a plague outbreak that same year.
However, the mythical miso-related part of the story begins at nearby Higo-Kokubunji Temple, which was built in 741. The monks and devotees here frequently used miso in their meals, and also maintained a miso storehouse on the site of the aforementioned shrine.
One year, the monks found, to their distress, that much of the year’s supply of miso had turned out horribly (or spoiled, depending on your interpretation). They prayed to Miso Tenjin, and were rewarded with a divine message: Take the Kannon bamboo that grows within the temple grounds, and place it upright in the miso barrel. Miraculously, this restored the miso’s flavour, and dinner was saved. Since then, the shrine has been regarded as the guardian deity of miso.
It's a fun story, and made even better by the annual Miso Tenjin Autumn Grand Festival held on 25 October where visitors receive free samples of barley miso. Apparently, the shrine gets through around 200 kilograms distributing these samples. That the shrine exists today is thanks to miso producers across Japan, who banded together to rebuild the shrine in 1957 after it was destroyed in a 1945 air raid.
Shōchū
I had assumed in a previous article that there were no shōchū deities. Happily, I have been proven incorrect — sort of. For one, there is Takaya Shrine in Minamisatsuma City, Kagoshima, which has the nickname of ‘Shōchū Shrine.’ It venerates Toyotama-hime, daughter of the sea deity Watatsumi, whose three children were born amidst flames. This legend has been interpreted as a metaphor for the production of shochu through distillation. A grain of salt might be warranted for this story.
Takaya’s official association with shōchū seems fairly recent, with an official ceremony enshrining the deity of shōchū having taken place on 9 September 2018. You can watch a (frankly hilarious) 30-minute musical performance depicting the shrine’s origins, starring members of the volunteer-run NPO Kagoshima Shochu Meisters Club and performed entirely in Kagoshima dialect.
Another amusing story concerns Kanamatsu Hōzen Shrine in Ebino City, Miyazaki Prefecture. Enshrined here is the eponymous Kanamatsu Hōzen, an Edo-period monk of mysterious origins who had been a great lover of shōchū in his life. (Anyone reminded of Heiter from Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End?) His heavy drinking didn’t seem to affect his formidable spiritual powers, however, and he had been known to have saved people from calamity on numerous occasions.
On his deathbed, he purportedly declared, “after I die, [you may] offer shōchū and make a single wish, which I shall grant. Make no more than one wish at a time! I will not grant two or more wishes! Greed is not to be tolerated.” So he isn’t really a deity of shōchū, just one who loves drinking the stuff.
Anyone who wants to pray at this shrine can pick up a prayer set (which includes shōchū, flags, etc) at a local supermarket along Route 53, inside or from the vending machines outside. You can't miss the vending machines, since they have a cartoon of a disgruntled-looking monk emblazoned on them.
Written by Florentyna Leow