S P O T ／ SPOT-270

Sekita Shrine (Original Shrine of Kasuga & the Deer Legend)

積田神社（春日大社元社・鹿伝承）つみたじんじゃ

Tucked into the Natsumi district of Nabari is a shrine that claims, quietly, to be the secret origin of one of Japan's most famous sights: the sacred deer of Nara. Sekita Shrine styles itself the 'original shrine' and 'inner sanctuary' of the great Kasuga Taisha. By its own tradition, about 1,250 years ago, in the year 767, the thunder-god Takemikazuchi set out from Kashima in far-eastern Hitachi to take up residence at the new Kasuga shrine in Yamato — and, the story goes, he made the journey on the back of a white deer, pausing here at Natsumi along the way. That single mythic migration is why deer roam freely through Nara Park to this day, and Sekita places itself squarely on the 'deer road' between the two. Statues of deer stand among the trees of its precinct, echoing the legend; a vermilion hall with bold crossed finials presides over the grounds; and a worship site marks the Mirror Pond, where the god is said to have caught his own reflection while fording the river — water that local lore insists is identical to Nara's Sarusawa Pond. Come in late autumn and the approach blazes gold beneath a single great ginkgo, a quiet provincial shrine carrying the weight of a national myth.