Meiji Jingu is the large shrine next to Harajuku Station in Tokyo, and it is free to walk into. It opens at sunrise and closes at sunset, so the hours change every month. Most first-time visitors are surprised by two things: the shrine was completed in 1920, which makes it very young by Japanese standards, and the forest around it was planted by hand.
What you’ll learn
- Who is enshrined at Meiji Jingu, and why it is a shrine rather than a temple
- Which of the three entrances to use, and how long the walk actually takes
- The official opening times month by month, what costs money, and where you need cash
- How the forest was made, and why it contains almost no cedar
What Is Meiji Jingu? Tokyo’s Shrine to an Emperor
Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine in Shibuya, Tokyo, dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. It was completed in 1920, which makes it young by Japanese standards, and it stands in a 70-hectare forest of about 100,000 donated trees that volunteers planted by hand. Entry is free, and it opens at sunrise.
The English name usually given is Meiji Shrine; jingu is a shrine title used in Japan for shrines connected to the imperial house. Both names refer to the same place, at 1-1 Yoyogi Kamizono-cho, Shibuya-ku.
The date matters more than it looks. Emperor Meiji died in 1912 and Empress Shoken in 1914, and a public wish to honour them followed at once. Various memorials were proposed — a statue, a library, a hospital — and a shrine was the most popular. It was dedicated on November 1, 1920, and the shrine cites a report in the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun the next day that half a million people came on that single day. Most of the buildings burned in the 1945 air raids; the forest survived, and they were rebuilt by 1958.
Shrine or Temple? Why “Meiji Temple” Is a Common Search
Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine, not a Buddhist temple, though a great many people search for it as one.
The practical difference is what you do at the front. At a Shinto shrine you bow twice, clap twice, and bow once more; at a Buddhist temple you press your hands together and do not clap. The quick test on the way in is the gate: a torii, the plain upright gateway, marks a shrine, and Meiji Jingu has three on the approach. The two traditions have sat side by side in Japan for centuries, so the confusion is fair — but clapping belongs to shrine worship and not to temple etiquette.
The Two Kami: Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken
Two kami are enshrined here, not one. English guides frequently shorten this to Emperor Meiji alone.
The shrine’s wording is that the kami enshrined here are the souls of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. Emperor Meiji (1852–1912), the 122nd emperor, reigned through the end of the shogunate and the opening of the country. Empress Shoken (died 1914) worked on public welfare and women’s education, and endowed a fund in her name with the International Committee of the Red Cross that is still in use today. Meiji Jingu is one of a number of Japanese shrines dedicated to people who actually lived, and what it venerates is what they did.
One consequence is easy to miss on site. The omikuji here are not fortunes. At most shrines you draw a slip predicting good or bad luck; at Meiji Jingu you draw one of thirty waka poems written by the Emperor or the Empress, with an English translation. Between them they composed roughly 130,000 of them. Expect moral advice, not a luck ranking.
Getting to Meiji Jingu: Three Entrances, Ten Minutes Each
There are three entrances, on three sides of the forest, and from any of them the walk to the main shrine buildings takes at least ten minutes.
That last figure is the one to plan around. English guides tend to say the shrine is next to Harajuku Station and stop there, which is true of the gate but not of the shrine: the main sanctuary sits near the middle of the grounds.
- Harajuku entrance (south). JR Yamanote Line, Harajuku Station; Tokyo Metro Chiyoda and Fukutoshin lines, Meiji-jingumae (Harajuku) Station. This is the busiest approach and the one with the largest torii.
- Yoyogi entrance (north). JR Yamanote Line and Toei Oedo Line, Yoyogi Station; Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line, Kita-sando Station. This is also the way in for cars.
- Sangubashi entrance (west). Odakyu Line, Sangubashi Station.
Visitors consistently report that the south approach carries the heaviest traffic through the middle of the day and that the north and west entrances are quieter. The shrine publishes nothing on this, so treat it as a traveller’s observation. Bicycles and motorcycles must be left at the entrance, where wheelchairs are also available.
Two nearby places are often mistaken for the grounds: Yoyogi Park is a separate public park next door, and the Meiji Jingu Gaien — the Outer Garden, with the ginkgo avenue — is about three kilometres away in Shinjuku. Takeshita Street and Omotesando are minutes from the south gate.
On the south approach you pass two walls of barrels: sake offered by brewers across Japan and, facing them, Burgundy wine casks from France. The wine fits the shrine — Emperor Meiji’s reign was when Japan opened to the West, and he is said to have drunk it himself.
Opening Hours, Costs and What You Need Cash For
Meiji Jingu opens with the sunrise and closes with the sunset, so its hours change every month of the year. It is open every day, entry to the shrine itself is free, and the counters that hand out amulets and write a goshuin take cash only.
| Month | Opens | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| January | 6:40 am | 4:20 pm |
| February | 6:20 am | 4:50 pm |
| March | 5:40 am | 5:20 pm |
| April | 5:10 am | 5:50 pm |
| May | 5:00 am | 6:10 pm |
| June | 5:00 am | 6:30 pm |
| July | 5:00 am | 6:20 pm |
| August | 5:00 am | 6:00 pm |
| September | 5:20 am | 5:20 pm |
| October | 5:40 am | 4:40 pm |
| November | 6:10 am | 4:10 pm |
| December | 6:40 am | 4:00 pm |
Facilities inside keep shorter hours than the grounds, mostly 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. A December visit therefore gives you a four-hour window at the shrine office even though the gates are open for more than nine. The two places inside that charge admission are the Inner Garden and the Museum; amulets, omikuji and a goshuin are given in return for an offering rather than sold.
| What | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The shrine itself | Free | No ticket gate |
| Meiji Jingu Gyoen (Inner Garden) | ¥500 (approx. US$3) | Described by the shrine as a contribution to maintenance. Once imperial land, commissioned in part for Empress Shoken. Irises in June, and Kiyomasa’s Well |
| Meiji Jingu Museum | ¥1,000 (approx. US$7) adults, ¥900 high school and under | 10:00 am–4:30 pm, last admission 4:00 pm, closed Thursdays. Opened 2019, near the south entrance |
| Restaurants and gift shop | — | Credit cards accepted |
| Amulet office, Kaguraden, goshuin counter | — | Cash only |
That last row is the practical one: you can pay for lunch with a card and then find you cannot pay for an amulet, so carry cash. Kiyomasa’s Well, in the Inner Garden, is widely described online as a power spot; the shrine makes no such claim, and neither do we. It is a spring-fed well dug in the Edo period, and it is worth seeing as that.
The Forest: 100,000 Donated Trees, Planted by Hand
The forest is not a remnant of old Tokyo. It is entirely man-made, planted on what had been mostly fields and rough ground, and designed to become a natural forest a century later.
About 100,000 trees were donated from across Japan and from territories then under Japanese rule, and around 110,000 young volunteers planted them and built the approaches across 70 hectares. Forestry scholars — Honda Seiroku, Hongo Takanori and Uehara Keiji — chose the species not for how the forest would look in 1920 but for what would still be standing in 2020.
At the founding the grounds held about 120,000 trees of 365 species. A survey published in 2013 counted about 36,000 trees of 234 species. That is not decline: the trees thinned themselves and the survivors grew large, which was the design. The same survey reported around 3,000 species of living things, including rare and endangered ones.
Walk it after Ise or Nikko and something will feel different: there is almost no cedar here. That was an argument at the time. Okuma Shigenobu, then prime minister, wanted cedar avenues like those at Ise and Nikko, and objected that anything else would produce a thicket. The forestry team refused. Cedar grows in damp valleys and does poorly in the soil and air of Tokyo, already polluted enough in the 1910s to be killing the city’s old trees; only broadleaf evergreens — shii, oak, camphor — would still be there in a hundred years. They won. The shrine notes an unintended effect: when the buildings burned in 1945 the forest sheltered people fleeing, and being broadleaf rather than resinous conifer, it may be why the fire did not carry.
Since the planting, the rule has been not to intervene: nothing added, nothing taken out, and a fallen tree left to return to the soil.
How to Visit: Etiquette, Goshuin and Photography
The sequence is short: bow at the gate, rinse your hands, offer a coin, then two bows, two claps, one bow. A goshuin is written at the counter in front of the Kaguraden from 9:00 am, and photography is barred in two places — in front of the main sanctuary, and at the amulet office.
At the torii, the gateway at the entrance, it is customary to bow once before passing through, and to walk to one side of the sando — the approach path — rather than down the middle. Near the main buildings you will find a temizuya, a covered basin. The shrine’s instructions are to rinse your left hand, then your right, then pour water into your left hand to rinse your mouth, and rinse the left hand again, letting the last of the water run down the handle. Do not put your lips on the dipper, and do not throw coins into the basin.
At the main buildings, put a coin in the offertory box, bow twice, clap twice, make your wish if you want to, and bow once more. That is the whole of it.
A goshuin — the seal and calligraphy given as a record of your visit — is issued at the Nagadono, the counter in front of the Kaguraden, from 9:00 am until closing. The shrine notes that the location can change from day to day. It is not a stamp-rally souvenir; it is written into a goshuincho, a book kept for the purpose, which you can buy here. Our guide to goshuin covers how to ask for one.
Photography is allowed, with two exceptions the shrine states plainly: not in front of the main sanctuary where people are praying, and not at the amulet office. Drones and unpermitted commercial photography are banned, eating and drinking are limited to the designated areas, and you should stay on the paths.
Five Elements Classification: Why Meiji Jingu Is a Void Shrine
Kannavi classifies every shrine into one of five elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void — using a fixed, published rule set. Meiji Jingu scores as Void, with 100 points out of 100.
This is not fortune-telling, and it is not a claim about what will happen to you. The classifier reads three checkable layers — who is enshrined and what category of divinity they belong to, the geography of the site, and the shrine’s lineage — each worth a fixed number of points. We publish the score sheet so that you can disagree with it.
| Layer | What was matched | Category | Element | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Enshrined kami | Emperor Meiji (principal) | Those who shaped the form of the nation | Void | 60 |
| 1. Enshrined kami | Empress Shoken (joined) | Same category | Void | 15 |
| 2. Geography | Long approach, wide grounds, open sky | Open siting | Void | 25 |
| 3. Lineage | No match — jingu is a rank, not a lineage | — | — | 0 |
| Total | Void | 100 | ||
Earth, Water, Fire and Wind all score zero, so there is no secondary element. One honest note: the shrine treats the Emperor and Empress as equally enshrined, while our classifier takes the first name given as principal and splits the points 60 and 15. Reversing them changes the split but not the total, because both fall in the same category.
What earns the sixty points is the category. Meiji Jingu enshrines neither a deity out of myth nor a warrior — where shrines to Emperor Ojin or Tokugawa Ieyasu sit in our scheme — but two people who presided over the remaking of a country’s institutions. The twenty-five points for geography are literal rather than poetic: ten minutes from any gate, seventy hectares of trees, and an open lawn north of the main hall.
In the Kannavi scheme the five elements sit in a cycle — Earth, Fire, Void, Water, Wind — in which each element shifts the flow of the next rather than opposing it. For comparison, Fushimi Inari Taisha also scores a clean 100, but as Earth: a harvest deity, a mountain, and an Inari lineage. Same score, nothing else in common.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is Meiji Jingu a shrine or a temple?
A. It is a Shinto shrine. Searches for “Meiji temple” are common, but there is no Buddhist temple of that name here. The jingu in the name marks its connection to the imperial house.
Q. How much does it cost to visit Meiji Jingu?
A. Nothing for the shrine itself. Inside, the Inner Garden asks ¥500 (approx. US$3) and the Museum charges ¥1,000 (approx. US$7) for adults. Bring cash: the amulet and goshuin counters do not take cards, even though the restaurants do.
Q. What time does Meiji Jingu open and close?
A. Sunrise to sunset, every day of the year, so the times change monthly — June runs 5:00 am to 6:30 pm and December 6:40 am to 4:00 pm. Offices inside close much earlier, around 4:00 pm.
Q. Which station is closest, and which entrance should I use?
A. Harajuku, on the JR Yamanote Line, is the closest. Whichever entrance you pick, allow at least ten minutes from the gate to the main buildings.
Q. How long does a visit take?
A. The shrine’s own answer is about an hour for the shrine alone, and about two hours with the Inner Garden and the Museum added. That is realistic, because the ten-minute walk happens twice.
Q. Is the forest natural?
A. No. It is a planned, man-made forest, planted by hand for the shrine’s creation and finished in 1920, and left alone ever since.
Summary
Meiji Jingu is free, open from sunrise, and ten minutes’ walk inside a forest that people made on purpose.
- Dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, and completed on November 1, 1920 — a century old, not a millennium.
- It is a Shinto shrine, not a temple: two bows, two claps, one bow.
- Three entrances — Harajuku, Yoyogi, Sangubashi — and at least ten minutes on foot from any of them.
- Entry is free; the Inner Garden asks ¥500 and the Museum ¥1,000, and the amulet and goshuin counters take cash only.
- In the Kannavi classification it scores 100 points as Void, with the full working shown above.
Next: read our guide to goshuin, compare it with Fushimi Inari Taisha, or return to the English guide to Japanese shrines.
The people who planted this forest were choosing trees for a place none of them would see. They argued with a prime minister about it, won, and then left it alone for a hundred years. Everything you walk under on the way to the main hall is the result of that argument — a forest built the way a shrine is built, by handing it forward.