History

It is thought that the origins of the shrine were contemporaneous with the emergence of Mine-mura, the present-day Mine-machi, around 1535. Until the late 1820s it remained very small, the Shin-pen-Musashi-Fudo-Kiko mentions  a small hokora in the area. Around that time there was an ascetic, Issan Gyōja (一山行者), who had been subjecting himself to strict austerities  on Mt. Kiso Ontake in Nagano-ken. One night he had a dream in which the kami of the three Mitake Jinja told him to leave the mountain and, while preaching the word and trying to alleviate human suffering, head towards Edo where, about 12km from the city  he would find a place to which he was tied by fate.  He did as the kami bade him and the place he found was the hokora  in Mine-mura. Through the kanjō/bunrei process he enshrined the Ontake deities there and under his spiritual guidance the shrine thereafter grew by leaps and bounds. In 1831 a new main hall of about the same size as the present one was built. Among the faithful who flocked to the shrine were many wealthy merchants and it seems they were quite generous with their donations. Other people who came to the shrine in large numbers were followers of the Kiso Ontake mountain cult living in Kantō and this situation continued until WWII.