Tōkyō-to, Chūō-ku, Shinkawa 2-25-11 東京都中央区新川2-25-11 October 9, 2024
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新川於岩稲荷田宮神社
Shinkawa Oiwa Inari Tamiya Jinja
Nearest station: Hatchobori Line: Hibiya Subway
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Enshrined Kami:
Main
Toyōuke-hime-Okami 豊受比売大神
Tamiya-Oiwa-Mikoto 田宮於岩命
Outside Subordinate Shrine:
Oiwa Inari Tamiya Jinja
Annual Festival: March 22
This Inari Jinja’s official name is Oiwa Inari Tamiya Jinja. The Shinkawa attached to it, the place where it is located, is to distinguish it from another shrine of the same name near Yoysuya san-chome in Shinjuku. These two shrines are very closely related, the one in Yotsuya being an external subordinate shrine of the one in Shinkawa.
The Oiwa in this shrine’s name refers to a woman of that name who lived in Yotsuya Samon-cho at the beginning of the Edo Period (1603-1868). Her father was Tamiya Matazaemon, a shogunate retainer. She married another Tamiya, Iemon, The marriage is said to have been a very happy one. but the family had fallen on hard times. Oiwa went to work for a merchant and in due course, and thanks largely to her efforts, the family’s prosperity was restored. She was a devout follower of the Tamiya family kami, and after her death in 1636 it became known as Oiwa Inari out of the reverence local people felt for her for restoring the Tamiya family fortunes and being the exemplary person she was. In 1717 the Tamiya family built an Inari Jinja next to the family shrine, and in response to growing demand from local residents to be allowed to visit it--the family shrine had been off-limits--the shrine was opened to the public. It came to be referred to by various names, among them Oiwa Myojin (於岩明神), Otake Myojin (大巌明神), Yotsuya Inari (四谷稲荷), and Samoncho Inari (左門町稲荷).
Almost two centuries years later the Kabuki playwright Tsuruya Namboku (鶴屋 南北) learned about Oiwa-san-no-Inari and decided to write a play about it. However, from the outset he knew that depicting Oiwa as the paragon of virtue she had been would not help put the proverbial butts on seats so he worked many juicy Edo
Period scandals into the story he ended up writing, the Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (東海道四谷怪談, Tokaido Yotsuya Ghost Story). It is probably Japan’s most famous ghost story, although the Tokaido has since been dropped from its name. Tsuruya’s kabuki play, first performed in 1825, was an instant hit and spawned a whole Oiwa-sub industry including, in modern times, films and TV dramas. Tsuruya’s story is complex and defies simple summarising. Very briefly it begins with Oiwa’s father, Matazaemon, trying to force his daughter and her husband, Iemon, to separate, moves on to Iemon killing Matazaemon, Iemon tricked into being unfaithful to Oiwa, Oiwa killing herself by mistake as a result and laying a curse on Iemon. It ends with the latter becoming insane after being relentlessly haunted by Oiwa’s ghost and being killed out of vengeance and compassion by Yomoshichi, the husband of Oiwa’s prostitute sister.
It became the custom for actors who were performing in Yotsuya Kaidan productions to visit the shrine prior to their performance, and in time it came to be said that if the actors did not visit the shrine they would fall ill or meet with accidents or in extreme cases become victims of curses. At the beginning of the Meiji period the shrine was formally named Oiwa Inari Tamiya Jinja. However, shortly after this, in 1879, it was burnt down in a fire which ravaged Yotsuya Sanmon-cho and was rebuilt on the Tamiya family site in Echizenbori, the current Shinkawa. This may have been at the request of Ichikawa Sadanji, the most popular of the Yotsuya Kaidan actors, who made the case that the Yotsuya site was very inconvenient to travel to and that the shrine should be relocated to somewhere nearer the Shintomi-za and other theatres. Shinkawa fitted the bill. The shrine was destroyed during the firebombing of 1945 and was reconstructed after the war.
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