S P O T ／ SPOT-359

Yoshitsune Shrine (Biratori)

義経神社よしつねじんじゃ

In the Hokkaido town of Biratori stands a shrine to a man who, by every official account, died in 1189 — Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the tragic samurai hero. This is the far northern anchor of the 'Yoshitsune Northward Legend,' the persistent folk belief that he did not perish at Koromogawa but slipped away across the sea to Ezo. Here the legend goes further still: Yoshitsune is said to have taught the Ainu farming, boat-building and weaving, and to have been venerated as the hero-god 'Hangan-kamui' — even identified with Okikurmi, the culture-bringing deity of Ainu myth. Tradition holds the shrine was founded around 1799 by a shogunate surveyor, Kondo Juzo, who consciously fused the Ainu god with the Japanese hero and enshrined a wooden image of Yoshitsune. It is one of Japan's great knots of legend, the single point where a mainland hero myth and Ainu belief cross — and from which, in time, the wild theory that Yoshitsune became Genghis Khan would spring. A small Yoshitsune museum stands in the grounds.