Visits to Japan’s only Shinto weather shrine surge as climate crisis bites

At the Kisho Jinja weather shrine in Tokyo, worshippers come to pray for respite from extreme weather events fuelled by global heating

Amid the hustle and bustle of Tokyo, the Kisho Jinja weather shrine has become a destination for a new and unusual kind of pilgrimage.

Described as the only shrine in Japan dedicated to the weather, it has seen a surge in visitors who clasp their hands together, bow their heads and pray for relief from yet another sweltering summer or destructive super-typhoon.

“In Japan, we used to have four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but recently we have only two: midsummer and midwinter,” says Yoichi Yamada, a parishioner in his 50s.

“I’m worried about flooding and other effects of climate change,” says another visitor, Shota Suzuki, 35. “Summers are getting more intense, and the heat is affecting food crops.”

Featured in the hit 2019 anime Weathering With You, the shrine in the western suburb of Suginami is popular with young people and has a digital display next to its massive outer torii gate showing daily forecasts. With a steady stream of visitors, the shrine is a spiritual sanctuary in the Bohemian neighbourhood of Koenji, known for its dance festival, bars and live music venues.

Daishin Kontani, a priest and certified weather forecaster at the shrine, says the number of worshippers concerned about the climate crisis and praying for stable weather seems to have increased over the past two to three years.

“In the past few years, Japan has also seen an increase in flooding and landslides caused by heavy and strong rain,” says Kontani, who teaches meteorology to prospective weather forecasters. “I believe that more worshippers are praying for things to calm down a little, and that they will come to the shrine to worship.”

The climate crisis has battered Japan with record high temperatures, increased risk of landslides and flooding, and more powerful tropical cyclones. In August, Tokyo was hit by “guerilla rainstorms” – sudden, unpredictable downpours that flooded train stations and overwhelmed sewer pipes. In July, medical authorities added a “most severe” category to the heatstroke index, saying that heat exhaustion had risen from a few hundred deaths a year two decades ago to about 1,500 in 2022, comparing it to a major natural disaster.

‘Summers have become so hot’

Kisho Jinja weather shrine stands on the grounds of Koenji Hikawa shrine. The sanctuaries are dedicated to several gods in the large pantheon of Shinto, a native Japanese faith that was the state religion until the end of the second world war. During the war the Imperial Japanese Army formed a research group to study how weather forecasting could benefit military strategy.

At its headquarters in nearby Mabashi, the unit decrypted weather reports sent in from throughout the empire. To improve its chances of success in forecasting, the unit sought spiritual help, establishing the first Kisho Jinja, or weather shrine, on the premises in Mabashi in 1944.

After the Allied occupation ended state Shinto in 1945, the shrine was dismantled and eventually rebuilt on the grounds of Koenji Hikawa.

Wooden votive tablets called ema hang at the Koenji Hikawa shrine in Tokyo, Japan, on 21 August 2024. Many visitors to the shrine write their wishes for fair weather during holidays, weddings and other important events on the tablets. Photograph: Timothy Hornyak/The Guardian

One of the enshrined deities, Yagokoro Omoikaneno Mikoto, is said to control eight meteorological phenomena including sunny skies, rain and thunder. Many visitors to the god’s shrine write their wishes for fair weather during holidays, weddings and other important events on wooden votive tablets called ema.

Visitors include those with a commercial interest, with everyone from air conditioner manufacturers, fireworks festival organisations, the Fuji Speedway racetrack and the Yokohama DeNA BayStars baseball team.

However, some pray out of desperation more than faith.

“Everyone needs to pray every day that major disasters will become smaller to some extent, even though they may be inevitable in today’s world,” says one parishioner in her 70s who did not want to give her name.

Parishioner Yamada says: “I’m concerned that the remarkable abnormal weather and unstable climate in recent years are causing great losses to agriculture. With extreme heat, flooding due to heavy rain, we are becoming unable to harvest our precious vegetables and fruits. If this situation continues, I worry there will be food shortages.”

Daishin Kontani, a Shinto priest and certified weather forecaster at the Koenji Hikawa shrine in Tokyo, Japan. Photograph: Timothy Hornyak/The Guardian

As the mercury reaches record highs across Japan this summer and warmer oceans fuel more powerful typhoons, Koenji Hikawa isn’t the only religious sanctuary where people are appealing to the heavens about the weather. In July, the Buddhist temple of Gonshoji in Tokyo revived a 700-year-old ritual known as Mizudome-no-mai, or dance to stop the rain, in which men blow on conch shells while being drenched with water.

They symbolise dragons, which are thought to be water gods. The ritual is one example of the thousands of community festivals held annually in Japan that are closely linked to the gods, seasonal events and weather.

“Summers have become so hot in Japan that we can no longer do some things we used to do, and it can negatively affect people’s health,” says Mikako Matsui, the head priest at Koenji Hikawa. “As climate change is the result of human activities, it’s incumbent on us to work together to do something about it using human knowledge.”