Namiori Jinja Shrine sits quietly near my mother’s house in a seaside town outside Fukuoka.
It’s a small shrine, easy to miss unless you’re looking for it, but it has a calm that feels much bigger than its size. I don’t usually follow the hatsumōde custom, but this year I felt drawn here. I wanted to reflect on the past year and quietly pray for my family’s health and well-being.
It was only the second day of 2026. Elsewhere, larger and more famous shrines would have been crowded with exhausted office workers, finally free during the brief window of the New Year holidays. Namiori Jinja, however, remained almost untouched by that seasonal rush. Facing the sea, it preserved the kind of ordinary stillness one hopes to find before something regarded as sacred.
The shrine isn’t part of the Association of Shinto Shrines (神社本庁), which some say is linked to questionable money going to Japan’s long-ruling political party, the LDP. This was also a personal reason I chose to pray here.
Namiori Jinja is home to three deities: Seoritsu-no-Okami, Sumiyoshi-Okami, and Shika-Okami.
Seoritsu-no-Okami, also called Seoritsu-Hime (Princess Seoritsu), is one of the Four Gods of Purification. She appears in the Great Purification Prayer, but not in the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀)* or the Kojiki (古事記)*. Because of this, she’s often seen as a mysterious goddess whose name has faded from many shrines in Japan. At Namiori Jinja, she’s also known as “Kifunekami” and “Kifune Myōjin.”
Shrine legend says that when Empress Jingu came back from her campaign against Shiragi (新羅) on the Korean Peninsula, the three deities—Seoritsu-Hime, Sumiyoshi-Okami, and Shiga-Okami—appeared on Tsuzumi Island (鼓島)*. They were first enshrined within a sacred fence at Miyanomoto, just east of where the shrine now stands. Empress Jingū is remembered as a strong female hero from ancient Kyushu, and this story connects Namiori Jinja to that distant, half-mythical past.
Another legend ties the shrine to daily life by the sea. Centuries later, fishermen from a nearby village were caught in a fierce storm. Desperate, they prayed to the three deities. The gods appeared above the wild waves and calmed the sea right away. The fishermen managed to “break the waves” and drift to Tsuzumi Island, where they waited for the winds to change. When hunger set in, the gods appeared again and gave them food. Once they recovered, the fishermen rowed safely home. Later, they found three stones in their boat where the deities had appeared, and these stones became the sacred objects of “Nami-ori Okami.”
It makes sense that all the deities worshipped here are closely tied to water and the sea, given how near the shrine is to the ocean. One legend at the shrine describes purification in vivid detail: Seoritsu-Hime, who lives in the rapids at the base of the mountains, carries sins to the ocean. Haya-Akitsu-Hime swallows them in the rough sea’s swirling currents. Then Ibukido-Nushi-no-Kami blows them toward Yomino-Kuni (黄泉国, the underworld), where Haya-Sasura-Hime erases them for good.
Together, these four deities are called the Four Gods of Purification. Shrines for them are usually small and modest, often found at entrances or boundaries.
Seoritsu-Hime, whose place in history seems partly lost, is still a mystery. Maybe that’s why the elderly man I met at the small omamori counter spoke with such dreamlike excitement. He shared theories about the shrine’s origins, its cosmic ties, and stories he’d seen on YouTube. I couldn’t dismiss him; mystery sparks imagination, after all.
There’s one more gentle detail at the shrine: a stone statue of a “surfing rabbit.” The rabbit, carved riding a wave, has quietly become popular with marine sports fans. It fits right in here, where the sea, myth, and daily life blend together.
*Nihon Shoki: An 8th-century official chronicle of Japan that records myths, legends, and early history, compiled to legitimize imperial authority and state rule.
*Kojiki: The oldest surviving Japanese text (8th century), documenting the creation myths of Japan, the genealogy of the gods, and the origins of the imperial line.
*Tsuzumi Island: Described in local shrine tradition as being off the coast of present-day Fukutsu City in Fukuoka Prefecture, near the shoreline facing the Genkai Sea. In shrine legends, it appears as a small coastal or near-shore island, close enough for fishermen to drift ashore during storms. Today, it is generally understood not as a clearly demarcated inhabited island, but as a place remembered through oral tradition and religious narrative, rather than one identifiable with certainty on modern maps.
Special thanks to:
波折神社の波兎と瀬織津姫（福岡県福津市） _ 神兎研究会
【御朱印情報】福岡県「波折神社」の「瀬織津姫」がキュートにデザインされた御朱印
