Japanese Shrines

Kannavi is a Japanese shrine database built on a rule we publish, not on tradition we assume.
Every shrine on this site is assigned one of five elements — Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void —
and the reasoning behind each assignment is printed on the page itself.

Lists that say “this shrine is a water shrine” are everywhere in English, and almost none of them
say why. We would rather be checkable than authoritative: where the enshrined deity cannot be traced to a
recorded category, we leave the element undecided and say so.

Shrines

Individual shrines, each with access from the nearest station, the enshrined deity, the etiquette specific
to that shrine, and the full reasoning for its assigned element. Pages are being added one at a time.

By area

Which shrines sit close enough to visit in one morning, and in what order the walk makes sense —
Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, Hiroshima and further out.

Goshuin

A goshuin is a seal and calligraphy given at a shrine office as a record of your visit.
It is not a stamp rally souvenir, and the difference shows in how it is asked for.

A note on shrines and temples

This site covers Shinto shrines (jinja) only. Buddhist temples such as Sensoji or Kinkakuji are
outside its scope, even where the names appear together in guidebooks. The distinction matters for etiquette:
what you do at a shrine gate is not what you do at a temple gate.