Tsurugaoka Hachimangu did not begin where it stands today.
In the later Heian period, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi, an ancestor of Minamoto no Yoritomo, was returning from battles in the northeast when he enshrined Hachiman, the guardian god of the Minamoto clan, near Yuigahama. It was a small shrine, close to the sea.
A little over a century later, Yoritomo raised an army in Izu, swept around the Boso Peninsula gathering a great host, and entered Kamakura. One of the very first things he did was to move this shrine from the shore to the foot of the hills. Then, with the shrine as his starting point, he ran a single grand avenue toward the sea and laid out the residences of his vassals along it. The shrine came before the capital.
At first, the shrine stood at the bottom of the hill. After it burned in a fire, it was rebuilt in the form it has today: the Upper Shrine halfway up the hillside, and the Lower Shrine, the Wakamiya, at its foot. From the shrine, set up high, the view runs straight down Wakamiya Oji all the way to the sea.
Before this shrine, the warriors swore their oaths as they set out for war, drew their bows and galloped their horses. Yabusame, the art of shooting at targets from horseback, is still performed as an offering at the autumn festival. The drumming of hooves and the dry crack of arrows striking their targets echo among the trees along the approach.
From a small shrine by the sea to the heart of a capital at the foot of the hills. Together with the shrine, the story of the Minamoto moved too, from the sea to the mountains.
Behind the shrine, the hills press close, and through those hills, cut open, several roads lead out of the capital.
