Nii-Tamatsushima-jinja Shrine

This shrine was founded in 1186 by order of Emperor Go-Toba. Fujiwara-no-Toshinari, a famed poet of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods, and father of the famous poet Fujiwara-no-Sadaie, carried out a ritual to relocate to his residence, a site reaching from Muromachi to Karasuma along Gojo Avenue (now Matsubara Rd.), Sotoshi-no-Iratsume, goddess of poetry and song, who was enshrined at the Tamatsushima Shrine in Wakaura (now in Wakayama Prefecture). Hence the name Nii-Tamatsushima, or New Tamatsushima.
Before that, in 1183, Fujiwara-no-Toshinari was ordered by Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa to start compiling the Senzai Wakashu (“Collection of a Thousand Years”) poetry anthology, using his residence as the court office for this work. That same year, Kiso Yoshinaka invaded Kyoto, and the Taira clan fled the city. However, there is a well-known story of how one of the Taira, Tadanori, doubled back to Toshinari’s mansion, heedless of the danger, and presented him with a scroll of his poems in the hope that even one of them would be included in the collection. Toshinari selected the following poem from in the scroll Tadanori had presented him, and included it in Senzai Wakashu:

Behind the old capital of Shiga, in ruins by the waves,
The wild cherries on Mt. Nagara blossom unchanged

In the Edo period, Kitamura Kigin, mentor of Matsuo Basho and the foremost annotator of classics such as The Tale of Genji, served as live-in priest at this shrine for about seven years, working on his annotations to the Manyoshu poetry anthology.
These historic connections are why even today many people come here to pray that their poetry and prose will improve.
Kyoto City