This is the twelfth of my ex post facto shrine reports.

Aguchi Jinja’s legend traces its origin to a request by Empress consort Jingūkōgō (神功皇后) while in the area during her return from the Korean campaign that a shrine honouring Shiotsuchino kami be built. The Engi-Shiki lists 24 shrines in its entry for Ōtori county in Izumi Province, and what is now Aguchi Jinja is one of those. The shrine has long been closely associated with Settsu Province’s Sumiyoshi Jinja (now Sumiyoshi Taisha in Ōsaka’s Sumiyoshi-ku). There is a written record dating from 731 referring to the shrine as Akiguchi -minato-hime Jinja (開口水門姫神社). In 744 under the auspices of the itinerant Buddhist monk, Gyōki, a temple, Mitsujōsan Nenbutsu-ji (密乗山念仏寺), with Yakushi Nyorai as its principal object of worship was built within the shrine grounds. This temple thus became the shrine’s Jingūji (a temple built adjacent to or in the grounds of a shrine), and for this reason the shrine was, and is, popularly known as Ōtera-san (大寺さん). In 1113 two other kami were merged into the shrine, Susano-o of Hara village and Ikukunitama of Kito village, and it was renamed Aguchi-mimura-Daimyōjin (開口三村大明神).

The shrine was given official recognition by the imperial house in 1425 and by the Muromachi Shōgunate in 1427. Both the shrine and the temple were traditionally under the sway of the Tsumura clan, but with Sakai’s development as a commercial