Seto Shrine, Shinto shrine in Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, Japan
Seto Shrine is a Shinto shrine in the Seto district of Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, near Kanazawa-Hakkei Station. Minamoto no Yoritomo founded it in 1180, enshrining the Mishima deity of Izu. Its grounds hold the Biwa Island Inari shrine, a giant kaya tree and a grove protected as local natural monuments.
Seto Shrine was founded in 1180, when Minamoto no Yoritomo, after raising his army in Izu, invited the Izu Mishima deity (now Mishima Taisha) here and had a hall built. In the Muromachi period the Kamakura kubō customarily worshipped at the shrine, and the Kamakura Annual Events records April 8 as the fixed date for that visit.
The shrine's name is also written 瀬戸三島明神, linking it to Mishima Taisha in Izu, from which its deity was transferred. Its May 15 festival features a procession and kagura, and the Tennō Festival fills the first two Sundays of July. On December 8 the year-end market, Toshi no Ichi, is held in the grounds.
Seto Shrine stands in the Seto district of Kanazawa-ku, Yokohama, about five minutes on foot from Kanazawa-Hakkei Station, served by both the Keikyu Line and the Yokohama Seaside Line. The grounds are flat and compact, with the shrine buildings and the wooded grove close together. The offshore Biwa Island shrine, reached by a bridge, is visited alongside the main hall.
The shrine's grounds contain the Seto Shrine Old Precinct Site, excavated repeatedly since 1987. Digs have turned up Jomon-period wave-cut platforms and early Jomon pottery, Kofun-period earthenware and shell mounds, and ceramics and features from the Muromachi to Edo periods.
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