What is an ichinomiya?
Ichinomiya (一宮, “first shrine”) means the leading shrine of one of Japan's historical provinces. This site lists 120 shrines in 75 provinces, spread from Hokkaidō to Okinawa: 109 on the map of the Ichinomiya Junpaikai (the pilgrims’ association) and 11 more for reference. Why the count is not simply one per province is explained below and on How many ichinomiya are there?
First, the provinces
Japan's 47 prefectures are modern — they date from 1871. For the thousand years before that, the country was divided into about 68 provinces (国, kuni): Musashi, Settsu, Izumo, Satsuma. Their names survive in station names, in food (Sanuki udon, Iyo oranges), and in the names of shrines.
The provinces were grouped into the five “home provinces” around the capital and seven circuits (五畿七道) — Tōkaidō, Tōsandō, San'indō and the rest. These were roads before they were regions, radiating out from Kyoto. This site is organised the same way, because that is how the shrines were organised.
How a shrine became “first”
When a governor arrived to take up his post in a province, he had to pay his respects to the local deities. The shrine he visited first came to be called the ichinomiya; the next, the ninomiya, and so on.
The practice seems to have settled some time in the late Heian and Kamakura periods — roughly the 11th to 13th centuries. And here is the thing that matters:
Nobody ever formally awarded the title
There was no imperial decree, no register, no ceremony. The ranking emerged from custom and precedent. That is exactly why, in 26 of the 75 provinces on this site, more than one shrine claims to be the ichinomiya — and the question was never resolved.
Compare this with the systems that were written down. The Engishiki (延喜式, completed 927) lists 2,861 shrines that received offerings from the court, graded by rank. The modern state ranking of 1871 sorted shrines into a strict hierarchy that lasted until 1946. Both were official; both are recorded on every shrine page here. Ichinomiya is different — it is the one that grew rather than being decreed.
Shrines that compete: ronsha
When several shrines claim the same title, they are called ronsha (論社). Musashi Province is the clearest case: three shrines are associated with the title, and they rest on completely different kinds of evidence.
Most sites resolve this by picking one and moving on. We don't. Each shrine page states plainly what the claim rests on — a public body's record, the shrine's own assertion, a listing on the pilgrimage map, or, in a number of cases, nothing we could verify.
The pilgrimage
The Ichinomiya Pilgrimage Association (全国一の宮巡拝会) organises a circuit of all of them and publishes a map of the shrines it recognises — 109 of them. Its list includes a handful of shin-ichinomiya (“new first shrines”) for places that were not provinces in the old system at all: Hokkaidō, Okinawa, and a few provinces created by later subdivision.
Completing the circuit takes most people years. It is not a route so much as a slow map of the country, and it will take you to places no itinerary would.
Reading a shrine's name
The suffix tells you what kind of shrine it is. All of these translate loosely as “shrine”:
- 神社 jinja
- The ordinary word. Most shrines.
- 大社 taisha
- “Great shrine.” Historically important, usually the head of a network of branch shrines.
- 神宮 jingū
- Associated with the imperial house, or with a deity of imperial descent.
- 宮 gū / miya
- Often a shrine to a specific historical or imperial figure.
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