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Photo: user:Amagase, CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
One of Japan's oldest shrines, dedicated to Mount Miwa, which it stands directly in front of. The shrine has a long connection to sake rice wine and sake dealers across Japan often hang a wooden cedar ball made at Ōmiwa Shrine as a talisman. The 32-meter torii gate in front of the shrine is the 2nd largest in Japan.
Ōmiwa Shrine , also known as Miwa Shrine , is a Shinto shrine located in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, Japan. The shrine is notable because it contains no sacred images or objects, since it is believed to serve Mount Miwa, the mountain on which it stands. For the same reason, it has a worship hall , but no place for the deity to be housed . In this sense, it is a model of what the first Shinto shrines were like. Ōmiwa Shrine is one of the oldest extant Shinto shrines in Japan and the site has been sacred ground for some of the earliest religious practices in Japan. Because of this, it has sometimes been named as Japan's first shrine. Ōmiwa Shrine is a tutelary shrine of the Japanese sake brewers.
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