The shrine legend dates its origins to around 1470 when Nakata Kaga, a retainer of the then Kanto Governor, dedicated a branch of  the Shirayama Hime Jinja in his hometown of Kaga Province in the grounds of his mansion.

It was given the name Gosha Gongensha. The Nakata family thereafter prospered, and in due course they built a new shrine. Sometime during the Edo Period the shrine’s betto-ji was destroyed and along with this all the records pertaining to the shrine were lost.     

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The Ogikubo Hakusan Jinja was not only the tutelary deity of the Ogikubo area, but also came to be known as the Kami for curing toothache.  This came about when Nakata Kaga’s younger brother, Hyogo, was suffering a severe bout of toothache and was told in a dream by the Hakusan Kami to eat his meals using chopsticks made from the bush clover found in the grounds of the shrine: this he did and lo and behold he completely recovered from his toothache.

Many parishioners followed his example, so many in fact that according to a document written in 1909 there was a veritable mountain of bush clover chopsticks which had been offered to the Kami in the shrine. Again, in 1967 the expansion of Ring Road Route 8 necessitated the reconstruction of the shrine and people were astonished at the huge number of bush clover chopsticks found to have been stored in the long beam of the old shrine.

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