Wakamiya Ōji

Wakamiya Ōji (若宮大路) is a 1.8 km street in Kamakura, a city in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan, unusual because it is at the same time the city's main avenue and the approach (sandō (参道)) of its largest Shinto shrine, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū. Over the centuries Wakamiya Ōji has gone thorough an extreme change. A heavily trafficked road today, it used to be, to the contrary, off limits to most people as a sacred space. At the time of the Kamakura shogunate it was an essential part of the city's religious life, and as such it hosted many ceremonies and was rich with symbolism. Since its construction Wakamiya Ōji has been the backbone of the city's street planning and the center of its cultural life. The street has been declared a Historic Site and was chosen as one of the best 100 streets in Japan.

Like most of Kamakura's famous things, Wakamiya Ōji was built at the time of the Kamakura shogunate. Its builder, first Kamakura shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo, wanted to imitate Kyoto's Suzaku Ōji (朱雀大路). The name Wakamiya Ōji means "Young Prince Avenue" and derives from its having been built in 1182 as a prayer for the safe delivery of Yoritomo's first son, future shogun Yoriie. That name appears also in the Azuma Kagami, but from historical records it seems likely that the avenue at the time was more often called Wakamiya Kōji (若宮小路). In fact, all other Kamakura streets called Ōji by the Azuma Kagami, for example Ōmachi Ōji and Komachi Ōji, are also called Kōji in other medieval texts. During the Muromachi period Wakamiya Ōji was called with a number of different names by different sources, including Nanadō Kōji (七度小路), for example in Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's official records, Nanadō Kōrō (行路) in the Kaigen Sōzuki (快元僧都記), and Sendō Kōji (千度小路) or Sendōdan (千度壇) in a poetry collection called Baika Mujinzō (梅花無尽蔵). The word Nanadō ("seven times") refers to the number of times the shogun's representative for the Kantō region (the "Kantō kubō") would walk around the torii gate called "Hama no Torii" (see below) in a ceremony part of a whole week of religious celebrations. Analogously, the term Sendō ("a thousand times") refers to the custom of praying a thousand times while on this sacred avenue.

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