Religious Festival at Atsuta Shrine in Miya (Station #42)

Catalog note / 解説

Miya, the forty-second station on the Tökaidö (in modern Nagoya Prefecture), takes its name from the famous Atsuta Shrine (miya literally means “palace” or “shrine”). Atsuta Shrine is one of the oldest and most important Shintö shrines in Japan, and is the traditional repository of one of the sacred imperial regalia, a sword believed to have been given by the sun goddess Amaterasu Ömikami. This scene depicts an annual festival at the shrine in which two divinely possessed horses were raced, an ancient Shintö agrarian ceremony that was believed to secure good harvests for the coming year. On the right side, a cropped Torii gate suggests the shrine. Two groups of men dash alongside the two ho…