Last update October 13, 2022
長岡天満宮
NAGAOKA TEMMANGU SHRINE (1)
A Shrine Honoring Michizane, Patron of Academy
Leisurely Strolling Around the Site, the Tragic Talent of the Era Spent His Youth
長岡天満宮
Nagaoka Temmangu Shrine
Located to the south of Kyoto, Nagaoka Temmangu is one of many Temmangu affiliates (more than 12000 throughout Japan). Temmangu is the shrine dedicated to Sugawara Michizane (845 - 903), an excellent poet and politician, sanctified as a Patron of Academy. The head shrine of the organization is Dazaifu Temmangu in Fukuoka prefecture, western Japan. Nagaoka Temmangu was built in 901, but the shrine building was once burned in the War of Onin (1467 - 1477).
The location where Nagaoka Shrine is built today used to be a place frequently visited by Michizane before he was exiled to Dazaifu, a place far away from Kyoto. Accompanied by Ariwara Narihira (his contemporary poet), Michizane spent his leisure time here, composing poems and enjoying ancient orchestra music.
Among aristocrats in those days, composing Kanshi (a Chinese-style poem using Chinese characters) and Waka (a Japanese verse containing five-seven-five-seven-seven syllable units) were popular leisure activities and often a telltale of their intellectual profundity as well as an artistic sensibility. His unrivaled, marvelous talents for literary arts eventually gave him the posthumous title of guardian of academic activities.