Todays main activity is the battlefield of Sekigahara, but in the morning I took a quick trip to Nagoya’s biggest shrine, Atsuta Jingu.
As the shrine’s website says, “The enshrined deity Atsuta-no-Ookami is Amaterasu-Oomikami as represented by the sacred sword Kusanagi-no-tsurugi, one of the three sacred treasures that symbolize the Imperial throne.” Now, one of the things about the three sacred treasures is that almost no one ever sees them. Rather, the shrine is a large, forested grounds with shrine buildings rebuilt in Meiji era in the style of Izumo Taisha, itself a very important shrine.
More on the shrine can be found here: https://www.atsutajingu.or.jp/en/intro/
Having honored the ookami-sama, it was on to Sekigahara. Sekigahara means “valley of the crossroads”, because a couple ancient roads intersected here. And that’s why this important battle happened here – Tokugawa Ieyasu (and allies) were headed to Kyoto to “convince” the emporer to make him Shogun, while Ishida Mitsunori was trying to stop him and preserve the inheritance of almost-but-not-quite-Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s infant son.
The museum at Sekigahara does an excellent job laying out the battle and creating vivid characters of the generals to help ground you in what went on and why. It also has a hands-on section where you can feel how heavy the weapons were. From the observation deck you can see the whole valley and pick out where the various camps were.
Though we didn’t get out into the valley much, we came away with a profound sense of “history happened here” much like visiting Gettysburg.
Out and About 