Jumping forward another three centuries, the Battle of Sekigahara, which took place in October 1600, ended in victory for the Tokugawa clan and is usually considered to mark the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Prior to the battle Tokugawa Ieyasu visited the shrine to pray for victory. In 1603 it was moved to a temporary site along with the expansion of Edo Castle and in 1616 it was moved to its present site to the north-east of the castle to act as the guardian deity against the negative influences thought to emanate from that inauspicious kimon direction. Thereafter the Tokugawa Bakufu were keen supporters of the shrine and funded successive rebuildings and renovations. In 1662, the 112th emperor, Reigen (霊元天皇), presented the shrine with a scroll written in his own hand referring to it as Kanda Daimyōjin.

Description

A five min walk from Ochanomizu Station. One of the Ten Tōkyō Shrines. The main hall, which was built in 1782, was destroyed in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923. It was rebuilt in 1934 as a ferro-concrete structure, most unusual for the time, and this enabled the building to avoid serious structural damage in the firebombing of 1945. There is much to see here; of particular interest to me are the large statue of Daikokuten and the kitsune  in front of the Suehiro Inari in-ground Jinja, which may have been founded in 1616.