In the Nishinomiya hometown folktale “The Wrath of Koshiki-iwa”,
About 400 years ago, there was a lord who found Koshiki-iwa while searching for a large stone to use in building the stone walls of Osaka Castle, hoping it would bring him great credit.
The villagers pleaded with him to stop, saying that the rock had long been home to a white dragon and that no one knew what kind of curse might come from disturbing it.
Even so, the officials brought in a large number of stonecutters and began the work.
Then, from the cracks in the rock that looked as if it might split at any moment, pure white smoke began to rise. Before long, the stonecutters tumbled down together with the rock.
It is said that the officials who witnessed this gave up on cutting out the rock, and Koshiki-iwa could not be carried away.
The rock you can see beyond the small shrine is Koshiki-iwa, the sacred object of the shrine. Its name comes from its resemblance to a tool called a koshiki, used when steaming sake rice.
The sacred rock is about
40 meters around and 10 meters tall!
If you walk around it, you can indeed see marks where someone tried to cut out the stone!
The upper part looks like this…
There was a sign like this,
and the carved mark of the castle lord who tried to cut out the rock was still there ヽ(^。^)ノ
Isn’t it kind of amazing that a legend still remains in a form you can actually see?
Here’s the location ↓
The address is 5-4 Koshikiiwa-cho, Nishinomiya City.
The Koshikiiwa Shrine website is here
