History

In 1571 there were three shrines, Torigoe Jinja, Dairoku Tensakaki Jinja, and Atsuta Daimyōjin in Mototorigoe in what was then Asakusa-ku and is now Taitō-ku. These were collectively known as the Three Torigoe Myōjin and housed the tutelary deity of the Torigoe area.  In 1645, during the reign of the third Tokugawa Shōgun, Iemitsu, the area was taken under direct Shōgunal control and as a consequence both shrine and people had to be moved. Land in what was then Sanya Mura in Toshima-gun, now part of Kiyoshi in Taitō-ku and close to the current shrine location, was made available and several tens of families moved along with the shrine. The area was renamed Shin-Torigoe and the shrine became Sanya Myōjin. In 1708, and again in 1824 and 1861, it was rebuilt. Like Imado Jinja, it was then destroyed in the Great Kantō earthquake of September 1923. By 1925 it had been temporarily rebuilt but in November 1927 land rezoning measures to facilitate urban revival saw it moved to its present site. As a result of the damage suffered in the 1923 earthquake, the main hall was rebuilt as a ferro-concrete structure and this allowed it to emerge relatively undamaged from the March 1945 fire bombing. The other shrine buildings were reconstructed in 1965.