Hokoku Shrine

Stele marking the entrance to Toyokuni Shrine, today neighboring the Kyoto National Museum.

• Established: 1599
• Japanese: 豊国神社 (Toyokuni jinja; Houkoku jinja)

Toyokuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Kyoto dedicated to Toyokuni Daimyôjin, the deification of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It is the head shrine of a network of Toyokuni shrines throughout the country.

Hideyoshi was deified, by Imperial decree, following his death in 1598. Toyokuni Shrine was established in Kyoto shortly afterwards, and is said to have been the grandest site in Kyoto at the opening of the 17th century. The grounds included the first tamaya, a particular type of Shinto altar dedicated to the spirit of a single individual, and a gravemound where, supposedly, hundreds of ears taken off Korean warriors defeated in the Korean Invasions are buried.

Branch shrines quickly proliferated throughout the country, as regional daimyô and other influential actors established them, as a show of worship or loyalty to the late Hideyoshi.

Sections of Toyokuni Shrine, along with its fief, were seized by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1615, and the chief object of worship relocated and made inaccessible. As part of the shogunate's efforts to enhance its own power and legitimacy, promote the worship of Tokugawa Ieyasu as Tôshô Daigongen, and eliminate Toyotomi loyalists, the shogunate seized the remainder of the shrine lands & buildings in 1620, leaving only a small gravesite on the site. Many branch shrines across the archipelago were destroyed, as Tôshôgû shrines spread. Some regional Toyokuni shrines, and festivals dedicated to Hideyoshi, managed to slip by unnoticed by the Tokugawa authorities, and to survive.

The lead Toyokuni Shrine in Kyoto, along with branch shrines across the country, have revived since the end of the Edo period.

References

• Roberts, Luke. Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan. University of Hawaii Press, 2012. pp142-143.

External Links

• Toyokuni Shrine on Google Maps