Ikuta Shrine

The Deity That Answered My Plea

Let me begin with some thanks.

Hiro and I left for our three-week holiday in Japan—places visited included Yufuin, Fukuoka, Izumo, Kyōto, Uji, Nara, Kōbe, Tōkyō, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Fujiyoshida, and Suwa (with more information in upcoming issues)—on March 19. After arriving in Kyōto on March 25, I had the chance to check my email, briefly on Tuesday the 28th before taking the train to Kōbe.

My inbox had exploded.

Substack had recommended Out of Japan to its users and before April began my readership had expanded from the original 175 people to 573! I am immensely grateful to all of you. I hope you will like what I will continue to share.

The number of paid subscribers took a leap as well. The first paid issue should be out later this week and will talk about some travel to Japan basics—what to bring with you and what to prepare for.

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My memoir’s title ends with The Deity that Answered My Plea. The deity in question is Wakahirume, a younger sister of Amaterasu, and she is venerated at Ikuta Shrine in the center of Kōbe.

Thirty years ago, frustrated by the lack of a lasting relationship, and by Hiro’s then hesitation in meeting me, I sought divine help.

I had been in Japan for about five years at that point. After getting over the initial shock that Japan’s gay male community embraced a far wider range of attractions than those American gay porn had quite literally exposed me to, I began to settle in.

With my own apartment, relatively easy access to Tōkyō, and the warm welcome of Japanese chubby chasers, I abandoned the pretense of my year in Japan as a pause before graduate school. My fears around HIV-AIDS began to subside as well. Although the Japanese press inaccurately continued to depict the virus as foreign, a mendacity that emboldened *some* gay bars and saunas to ban (visibly) foreign men, I had yet to meet any HIV+ people.

Man after man pursued me, but for the most part those liaisons were ephemeral. I stumbled into what I thought was a serious relationship early in 1991, only to realize later that year that he was using me. A mix of affairs lasting anywhere from several hours to several weeks followed.

Throughout 1993, there was one young man, four years my junior, that I kept up a type of correspondence with. Hiro and I had met in a precursor to online forums: a modem-based dial-up bulletin board service called GayNet Japan. At some point early on we exchanged phone numbers and I’d call and talk. Each conversation ended with an invitation: would Hiro like to meet me in person?

Each time he demurred.

And I spend the next few weeks dating other men before getting bored and calling Hiro again.

As my work wrapped up at a conference in Kōbe, in May of that year, a coworker suggested, apropos of my appreciation of the Shintō religion, that I stop in at Ikuta Shrine before boarding the Shinkansen back to Tōkyō.

One of the many things I have long loved about Japan is the ability to enter a world of complete calm, no matter how strident the urban landscape around you, as soon as cross into a shrine’s precincts, passing under the final torii.

Remembering that the center space under the torii is where the deities enter and exit the shrine, I kept to the right side, bowed, and soon found a description of the shrine and its history.

Ikuta is one of three oldest shrines in the city of Kōbe and was founded in the year 201. Ancient records note that Japan’s fourteenth imperial ruler, the Empress Jingū, was prevented from making a safe return near Kōbe after sailing to Korea and back. When the empress sought divine guidance, the Goddess Wakahirume appeared and asked to be enshrined in Ikuta, one of the old names for Kōbe.

The shrine was originally located on the mountainside above the city (above where the Shin-Kōbe bullet train station is currently located), but serious flooding in the year 799 prompted the local residents to relocate the shrine to its current location.

After praying before the shrine’s open doors, I received an amulet to keep my prayers with me.

Six months later, after an accidental first date in November of 1993 (it was supposed to be a group GNJ outing but only Hiro and me showed up), Hiro agreed to a second date. And then a third.

Before the year ended, I gave the Ikuta amulet to Hiro. I was (and remain) grateful to both the deity and Hiro.

He still has that first amulet. But I will always want to return to Ikuta and give thanks for the divine nudge that began thirty years ago for the best thing that ever happened to me.

One last note. I mentioned that I learned about Substack’s recommendation right before Hiro and I got on a train to Kōbe. We were returning to Ikuta Shrine (as we had done during our last Japan visit in 2016), and although I embarrassed Hiro a little when I did so, I stopped a shrine acolyte to thank her for Wakahirume’s lasting intercession on my behalf.

Hiro and I at Ikuta Shrine on December 28, 2016.

And in 2023.

The wooden torii marks the separation of the entirety of the shrine precincts from the rest of the city. The vermillion torii marks the separation for Ikuta shrine itself. I discovered that there are multiple smaller shrines within the precincts.

The steps to a small shrine to Inari, the Fox God, are lined with multiple torii, as is customary for Inari Shrines. The contrast between vermillion and cherry blossom delighted me.