History

It is said this Hikawa Jinja was founded in 740 with the shintai being a crudely carved, two shaku high, image of Susano-o. There is, however, no evidence for this as during the Enbun Period (1356-1360) first fire, and then flooding from the nearby Tama River, destroyed any documentary or other types of evidence which might have existed. In 1570, the lord of the Kitami area, a certain Edo Yoritada (江戸頼忠), restored the by then derelict  shrine. He was a descendant of Edo Shigenaga (江戸重長), the second patriarch of the Edo clan who is credited as having given his name to the settlement which became Edo. In 1593 a descendant of Yoritada, Edo Katsutada, changed the family name to Kitami in order to demonstrate fealty to the Tokugawas, and in 1649 the fourth Tokugawa Shōgun, Iemitsu, awarded the shrine a stipend of 10 koku 2 to, and it thereafter continued to enjoy the Tokugawa largesse. In 1682 the then Lord Kitami awarded the shrine a 5- koku 2-to stipend and this was followed five years later by its rebuilding. Jumping forward two centuries, 1873 saw the shrine designated as a village shrine, in 1874 it was elevated to a Gōsha. In 1922 a plan was drawn up to rebuild the main hall, but the devastation caused by the Great Kanto Earthquake of the following year meant that the work was not finished until 1926. Disaster struck again in 1988, however, when the main hall was destroyed by fire. 1990 saw the rebuilding.