Kii Province Ichinomiya
Hinokuma Kunikakasu Jingu
日前・國懸神宮
Hinokuma Kunikakasu Jingu is the ichinomiya — the leading shrine — of the former Kii Province, in present-day Wakayama. It has a car park (about 100 spaces), free. Opening hours end at 17:00 (shrine office). Without a car, the shrine's own website gives 2 routes from a station (on foot), one of them a walk of 1 min; the station names are listed below. Its principal annual festival (reisai) falls on September 26 every year. The nearest other ichinomiya is Itakiso Jinja, 5.2 km to the south-east in a straight line.
Getting there
和歌山県和歌山市秋月 365
The address is given in Japanese on purpose. Show it to a taxi driver, or copy it into a car navigation system — an English transliteration will not be recognised.
For a car navigation system
- Phone
- Japanese car navigation searches by phone number. This is the fastest way to enter a destination.
- Coordinates
- Derived from the address down to the street number, via Japan's national mapping agency. Not a survey of the hall itself
- Address
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By train and bus
- From 日前宮駅和歌山電鐵貴志川線
- On foot, 1 min.
- From 和歌山駅
- On foot, 20 min.
The source, word for word (bus stop names included):
・9番線貴志川線乗り換え…日前宮駅下車 徒歩1分 ・東口バスターミナルより和歌山バス…日前宮駅下車 徒歩1分 東口改札より徒歩20分
Taken from the shrine's own website (日前神宮・國懸神宮【公式サイト】交通アクセス, checked 2026-10-08). Station and stop names stay in Japanese so you can match them to signs. Fares and timetables are not given — they change.
Parking
It has a car park (about 100 spaces), free.
This routes you to the car park, not to the hall. From this car park to the hall is about 70 m in a straight line (the walk is longer). The location is taken from OpenStreetMap and has not been checked on the ground.
最大100台・大型バス可。参拝者は無料
The note above is in Japanese; it usually records dates when the car park is closed, and the fee.
Shrine office hours
Opening hours end at 17:00 (shrine office).
The full note from the source, in Japanese:
8:00-17:00（祈祷受付は16:00まで）
Closing times of every ichinomiya, earliest first →
Visiting the 3 ichinomiya in Wakayama in one day? Work out an order that reaches each office before it closes →
History in brief
- Founding
- According to the shrine, it began when Amenomichine-no-Mikoto enshrined two sacred mirrors at Kemi in Nagusa after Emperor Jimmu's eastern campaign.
- Moved
- The shrine says it moved to Hamanomiya in the 51st year of Emperor Sujin, and to its present site in the 16th year of Emperor Suinin.
- Buildings
- After the grounds were ruined in Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Tensho-era campaign, Tokugawa Yorinobu, first lord of Kishu, rebuilt the buildings.
- Buildings
- Government-funded improvement work begun in 1919 gave the shrine its present appearance on completion in March 1926.
Summarised from the shrine's own website (日前神宮・國懸神宮について, checked 2026-10-08). Traditions are given as the shrine tells them, not as established history.
Enshrined deities
- Hinokuma-no-Okami 日前大神
- Omoikane-no-Mikoto 思兼命 shares the hall
- Ishikoridome-no-Mikoto 石凝姥命 shares the hall 2 ichinomiya enshrine this deity →
- Kunikakasu-no-Okami 國懸大神
- Tamaoya-no-Mikoto 玉祖命 shares the hall 2 ichinomiya enshrine this deity →
- Aketatsuamenomikage-no-Mikoto 明立天御影命 shares the hall
- Uzume-no-Mikoto 鈿女命 shares the hall 3 ichinomiya enshrine this deity →
Spelling as given by the shrine's own website.
Festivals
- Principal annual festival
-
9月26日 日前神宮例大祭・國懸神宮例大祭
source
Other festivals and rituals
- 日前宮えびす詣り（宵えびす・本えびす・のこり福）
- 1月9日～11日
- 市戎祭
- 1月10日
- 日前宮薪能
- 4月8日
- 夏越しの大祓（なごしのおおはらい）
- 6月30日
- 松尾祭
- 11月
Nearest ichinomiya
The closest is Itakiso Jinja, about 5.2 km to the south-east in a straight line, in the same province. After that come Nifutsuhime Jinja (29 km east) and Izanagi Jingu (41 km north-west).
Straight-line distances between the shrines, not road distances. Across mountains or water, the drive is much longer.
Why this shrine is called an ichinomiya
No primary source found
We could not find any primary source calling this shrine an ichinomiya — not the shrine’s own site, and not any public body. We say so rather than assume.
Listed on the map published by the Ichinomiya Pilgrimage Association.
Wakayama Prefecture’s official tourism site calls it only “a great shrine of two shrines in one, Hinokuma Jingu and Kunikakasu Jingu”, with no mention of the ichinomiya. The shrine’s own website does not support HTTPS, so its text could not be checked, and no primary source for calling it the ichinomiya of Kii Province could be found.
- https://www.wakayama-kanko.or.jp/spots/detail_578.html (checked 2026-09-09)
- 全国一の宮巡拝会『全国一の宮神社所在地』（平成30年5月・改訂版 第4版） (checked 2026-09-09)
More on how the shrines of this province relate to one another is on the Kii Province page.
Historical rank
- Province
- Kii Province (Nankaidō)
- Prefecture
- Wakayama
- Engishiki (927)
- Myōjin Taisha
- Former state rank (1871–1946)
- Kanpei Taisha
Sources
- https://www.wakayama-kanko.or.jp/spots/detail_578.html (checked 2026-09-09)
- https://hinokuma-jingu.com/access.html (checked 2026-09-09)
- http://www.hinokuma-jingu.com/jingu.html (checked 2026-09-10)
How we handle spellings, festival selection, former ranks and map accuracy is set out once on the About page.