There is a “Uegahara Hachiman Shrine” on the hillside side of Kwansei Gakuin University.
This torii gate is the oldest torii gate in Nishinomiya.The stone bridge you can see at the very front is also quite old!
There were characters carved into the pillars of the torii gate, but even after looking closely, I couldn’t really make them out (・_・;)
Hmm, I could only read “April”!
According to the stone monument, “Uegahara Hachiman Shrine” was founded in Kanbun 3!
In the Western calendar, that’s 1663, which means 357 years ago!!
That’s such a long time ago, isn’t it? ^_^;
I had visited this shrine many times without realizing it was this old(^^)A clean-water irrigation channel runs in front of the shrine, and before Kwansei Gakuin’s baseball field and American football field were built, the area around it was forest. It used to have a wonderful atmosphere, surrounded by woods that felt like the kind of place Totoro might live!
And the torii gate was built in 1673, 347 years ago!
This is the oldest torii gate in Nishinomiya(*^^)v
The main hall looks like this, and these komainu guardian lions are from the late Edo period, Tenpo 3, or 1832 in the Western calendar, and have been protecting the shrine for 188 years!
Uegahara Shrine has many stone structures made during the Edo period.
The chozu stone basin above is also from Tenna 2, or 1682 in the Western calendar, making it 338 years old, and
the stone lantern in the back left of the torii gate,
as well as the lantern on the slightly higher ground in the back right, also seem to have a lot of history.
Here is “Uegahara Hachiman Shrine” on the map↓
The address is 4-93 Uegahara Yamada-cho, Nishinomiya.
Finally
I had no idea that “Uegahara Hachiman Shrine,” a place I had visited many times, had such a historic torii gate and komainu guardian lions.
It seems to be carefully looked after by the Uegahara Agricultural Association（Uegahara has many fields, and we also wrote about it in this article: We went to the area in front of Uegahara Elementary School, where you can hear a huge chorus at night [with video]）. Every time I visit, it is beautifully maintained and feels very pleasant!
There is no parking lot at the shrine, but since Kwansei Gakuin is nearby, there are plenty of coin-operated parking lots in the area, so why not stop by? (*^^)v
By the way, if you take the Hankyu Bus, it’s about a 5-minute walk from the “Uegahara” bus stop!(^^)!
