S P O T ／ SPOT-258

Sata Nishide Tennō-san no Oyashiro-tō (Tennō-sama's Shrine Tower)

佐田西出 天王さんのお社塔さたにしで てんのうさんのおやしろとう

Standing by the roadside in the Nishide hamlet of Sata, Meiwa Town, is a small shrine-like structure remade each year entirely from wheat straw and bamboo. Locally called 'Tennō-san,' it enshrines a deity of pestilence-warding (Gozu Tennō) with a talisman from Tsushima Shrine kept inside. Four mōsō bamboo poles, set about 60 cm apart, serve as pillars; the structure stands roughly two meters tall, topped by a wheat-straw roof re-thatched every year and bearing three katsuogi (decorative log ornaments symbolizing shrine architecture). Inside, at about 1.3 meters' height, a shelf of woven bamboo forms the sanctuary. Each year before the Tennō Festival on July 14, all the men of the hamlet — about 30 households, 30 people — dismantle the previous year's structure to use as a model and rebuild it from scratch; the roof is renewed annually and the bamboo pillars every two years. Rather than a permanent shrine, what lies at the heart of the faith is this very act of perpetually re-erecting a shrine from one-year-only materials. It was designated an Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Meiwa Town in 2019.