Terukuni Shrine

Introduction

Terukuni Shrine honours Shimazu Nariakira, the eleventh lord of Satsuma and twenty-eighth head of the Shimazu house, who launched the Shuseikan industrial works at Iso with its reverberatory furnace and spinning mill and set Kagoshima on the road to modern industry. Founded in 1864, with the deity named Terukuni Daimyojin, it burned in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 and again in the air raids of 1945, so the present buildings are postwar reconstructions. Beyond the striking white torii at the Terukuni-cho street entrance, the stone steps are lined with a bronze of Nariakira, a monument to the Satsuma dead of the Boshin War and a stone lantern celebrating the return of troops from the Russo-Japanese War, laying the domain's late-Edo and Meiji history along the approach. At the winter solstice the rising sun lines up with the centre of the torii, a date local photographers keep each year. The city truly comes alive on 15 and 16 July for Rokugatsu-do, the 'sixth-month lantern' festival: the name follows the old lunar calendar and the rite began as a memorial for the anniversaries of Shimazu ancestors. Hundreds of hand-painted lanterns fill the grounds and steps for two nights of stalls, flower displays and dedicatory performances, the largest such festival in the prefecture. The grounds are free all day, the office handles goshuin from 09:00 to 16:30, and five minutes up from Tenmonkan-dori connects easily to the Tsurumaru Castle gate, the Reimeikan museum and the Shiroyama lookout.

✨ Highlights

🛈 Practical Info