Kompira Shrine

Kotohira-gū (金刀比羅宮; also known as "Konpira-dai-gongen") is a Shintō shrine in the town of Kotohira in Nakatado District of Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. It is often familiarly referred to as Konpira-san and supposed to be founded during the first century.

Located at 521m halfway to the top of Mount Zōzu, the shrine stands at the end of a long path, with 785 steps to the main shrine and a total of 1,368 steps to the inner shrine. Since the Muromachi Period pilgrimages to the shrine became popular, and even today usually hundreds of visitors in a day climb the steps of Mount Zōzu. On the way to the shrine is located a sake museum, various stores selling a variety of goods, and there are lots of stones in which are the names of donators to the shrine carved in kanji-characters. Due to the Honji Suijaku theory which claimed the buddhas to be incarnations of local Shintō-"kami", Kotohira shrine was in times prior to the Meiji era equally a buddhist and a shintōist sanctuary.

The principal "kami" of the shrine used to be Ō-mono-nushi-no-mikoto, a spirit associated with seefaring (also referred to as the buddhist deity Konpira), but Ō-mono-nushi-no-mikoto got replaced by the spirit of Sutoku-Tennō in 1165.

Prior to the Meiji period, it was known as Konpira Dai-gongen, and stands at the head of the nationwide group of shrines bearing the names Kompira and Kotohira. The ema hall is the site of prayers for safe seafaring.

Kompira Shrine has several Important Cultural Assets, including a Heian period statue of the eleven-faced Kannon Bosatsu, and four ink paintings by Maruyama Ōkyo.