Awashima Shrine, Shinto shrine in Tottori Prefecture, Japan

Awashima-jinja stands on Myōjin-yama, a 36-metre hill that was once an island in Nakaumi. A grey stone torii with a sacred rope and paper streamers faces the approach, and a stone pillar beside it bears the name 粟嶋神社. The whole hill is a protected evergreen forest, and the shrine buildings were moved from the foot to the summit in the Edo period.

The founding year is unknown, as records were lost to repeated fires. During the Sengoku period the hall burned when the Amago clan invaded Hoki, and the Amago later rebuilt it and donated shrine lands. In the Genroku era (1688–1704) it burned again; the following year's reconstruction moved it from the mountain foot to the summit. In 1751–1763 land reclamation around Awashima joined it to the Hikona polder, and in 1936 the hall was rebuilt.

The shrine's name comes from a legend in the Hoki Fudoki (733): Sukunabikona sowed millet (awa) here, was flung by a ripening ear and crossed to the land of the eternal, so the island was called Awashima. A folk tale adds that he planted millet seeds from his stool and the island turned into a millet field. The shrine was renamed Awashima Jinja at the Meiji Restoration, when its subsidiary shrines were merged.

The shrine stands on Myōjin-yama, a 36-metre hill that was once an island in Nakaumi; the surrounding land became the Hikona reclaimed polder in the Hōreki era (1751–1763). The precinct is wooded with large Castanopsis and other evergreens, and the shrine grove is a prefectural natural monument. The stone torii and its inscribed pillar bearing 粟嶋神社 stand in front of the approach.

The shrine's name comes from a legend in the Hoki Fudoki (733): the dwarf deity Sukunabikona sowed millet here, and when it ripened he rode a burst ear of millet across to the land of eternity. The daughter of a local fisherman who unknowingly ate mermaid flesh became the nun Yaobikuni; she lived as a hermit in the Shizuno-iwaya cave on the shrine's west side and died at 800.