Katori Shrine

Katori Shrine is the ichinomiya of Shimōsa Province and the head of some four hundred branch shrines, dedicated to Futsunushi, a kami of swords and lightning. The early eighth-century Hitachi Fudoki knew the shrine, whose guardians the Ō clan had migrated from Kyushu and allied with the Nakatomi of neighbouring Kashima.

As a tutelary of the Fujiwara it supplied the second deity of Kasuga Taisha when that shrine was founded in Nara. The Engishiki of 927 names it a myōjin taisha, one of only three shrines styled Jingū alongside Ise and Kashima.

Minamoto no Yoritomo and Ashikaga Takauji were among its samurai patrons, while its estates drew income from fishing rights and toll barriers. The Tokugawa shogunate rebuilt the shrine in 1607 and again in 1700, the latter rebuild giving the precinct its shape into the nineteenth century.