Ōmiwa Shrine

Ōmiwa jinja 大神神社
Large torii in front of Mount Miwa
Information
Dedicated to	Ōmononushi Ōnamuchi Sukunahikona-no-kami Mount Miwa
Address	1422 Miwa, Sakurai-shi, Nara-ken
Website	www.oomiwa.or.jp
Glossary of Shinto

Ōmiwa Shrine (大神神社, Ōmiwa-jinja^?), also known as Miwa Shrine (三輪神社, Miwa-jinja^?, alternately written as 三輪明神 Miwa-myōjin), is a Shinto shrine located in Sakurai, Nara, Japan. The shrine is noted because it contains no sacred images or objects because it is believed to serve Mount Miwa, the mountain on which it stands. For the same reason, it has a worship hall (拝殿, haiden^?), but no place for the deity to be housed (神殿, shinden^?). 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.

Ōmiwa Shrine's history is closely related to Mount Miwa and the religious practices surrounding the mountain. In the early Kofun period, Yamato kings and leaders had shifted their attention to kami worship on Mount Miwa, and Ōmiwa Shrine was the major institution for this branch of worship. The style of Shinto surrounding Miwa became later known as Miwa Shinto, and is set apart from previous practices by a more structured theological philosophy.