Omiwa Shrine

Ōmiwa Shrine (大神神社, Ōmiwa-jinja), also known as Miwa Shrine (三輪神社, Miwa-jinja, alternately written as Miwa-myōjin (三輪明神)), is a Shinto shrine located in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, Japan. The shrine is noted because it contains no sacred images or objects because it is believed to serve Mount Miwa, the mountain on which it stands. For the same reason, it has a worship hall (拝殿, haiden), but no place for the deity to be housed (神殿, shinden). In this sense, it is a model of what the first Shinto shrines were like. Ōmiwa Shrine is one of the oldest extant Shinto shrines in Japan and the site has been sacred ground for some of the earliest religious practices in Japan. Because of this, it has sometimes been named as Japan's first shrine. Ōmiwa Shrine is a tutelary shrine of the Japanese sake brewers.