History

There is no real evidence as to how and when the Seiso-Shirayama Jinja was founded but the circumstances and timing are generally assumed to be the same as those for the Ōmiya Hachiman-Gū. The jinja's own information board and the history/culture page of the Suginami-ku home page discuss local place names rather than the particular history of the shrine, and what follows is taken from those two sources. It was the village shrine for the Shirahata (白幡) section of the old Seiso (成宗) village; the Shirahata name was taken from Minamoto Yoriyoshi's experience on the road to Ōshu. The existence of Seiso itself is attested to in a text published in 1559. Before being taken under the direct control of the Bakufu in the Edo Period, Seiso had been administered by the Okabe Clan (岡部氏), themselves Hatamoto, (direct retainers of the Tokugawa Shōguns). The Shirayama Jinja name comes from the Shinpen's entry for Higashitama-gun, where the existence of a Shirayama Jinja in Seiso village is noted. What was Higashitama-gun is now part of Nakano-ku and Suginami-ku. During the Edo Period,