Shirahige Shrine, Shinto shrine in Tsurugashima, Saitama Prefecture, Japan

Shirahige-jinja is a wooden shrine in Tsurugashima, Saitama, with a broad, shallow-pitched grey tiled roof. A thick twisted straw rope with five white zigzag paper streamers hangs across the front, and two wooden lantern posts bearing the characters 御神燈 stand before the entrance. Steps lead up to a central offering box.

Tradition holds that the shrine was founded in the Nara period by Goguryeo people who settled in Musashi Province and formed Koma District, where they built 26 shrines as village guardians. Until around the Edo period it served as the tutelary shrine of seven villages, including Wada, Takakura and Ashizawa. From the Meiji era it held the rank of village shrine (sonsha).

The shrine's name comes from Shirahige, the white-bearded deity, and its grounds hold a keyaki zelkova over 900 years old, a prefectural natural monument whose large branch broke in a 1972 typhoon and has since been treated against rot. The Koshikake rain-making rite, a nationally selected intangible folk cultural property, is held every four years in Olympic years; its dragon-serpent effigy is assembled beside the shrine and the rite begins with the priest's prayer.

The shrine stands at 6-10-20 Ashidate-machi, Tsurugashima, about a 23-minute walk from Sakado Station on the Tobu Tojo Line. The treasure storehouse holding the eleven-headed Kannon statue and the ridge-tag tablets opens only during the first three days of the New Year. The Ashidate Hall on the grounds serves as a meeting place for local residents.

The shrine's keyaki tree, a Saitama Prefecture natural monument, is over 900 years old; a typhoon broke a major branch in 1972, after which it received preservative treatment. The shrine also keeps a Muromachi-period eleven-headed Kannon statue, a city-designated cultural property shown in its storage hall during the first three days of the New Year.