AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Tucked into the quiet northern wards of Tokyo, Nezu Shrine (根津神社) is a hushed, moss-and-vermilion world that feels a century removed from the city outside. It is best known for two things: a long tunnel of vermilion torii gates climbing its wooded hillside, and, each spring, a riot of azaleas that carpets the slope in pinks, reds, violets and whites. One of the so-called Tokyo Ten Shrines, it pairs old Edo-period craftsmanship with one of the city's most photographed spring scenes.↗↗
Legend traces the shrine's founding more than 1,900 years ago to the prince Yamato Takeru, and it enshrines Susanoo-no-Mikoto, kami of sea and storms. The buildings standing today date from the early 1700s, when the Tokugawa shoguns relocated and rebuilt the shrine on this site—making it one of the oldest places of worship in the capital and a rare survivor of Edo-period shrine architecture, with several structures designated Important Cultural Properties of Japan.↗↗
A pocket of Edo-period architecture
The shrine's greatest treasure for architecture lovers is how much of its original early-18th-century fabric still stands. Coming from the subway, you pass beneath a great red myōjin-style torii at the entrance, cross a small bridge that traditionally symbolizes the purifying step before sacred ground, and find yourself facing a two-storied rōmon tower gate guarded by warrior-attendant statues. Behind it, the main hall (honden) is built in the elaborate ishi-no-ma-zukuri style modeled on the Tōshō-gū shrine at Nikkō, with richly decorated woodwork and a 200-metre lattice-windowed wall (sukibei) ringing the sanctuary.
