Tomioka Hachimangu

On a normal weekday Tomioka Hachimangu is a quiet shrine three minutes from Monzen-nakacho Station. In mid-August it is the center of the Fukagawa Hachiman Festival, one of Edo's three great festivals, where people along the route throw buckets of purifying water over the mikoshi bearers to shouts of wasshoi. Every third year is the main festival, when 53 neighborhood mikoshi gather and parade together. The shrine was founded in 1627 on what was then a sandbar called Eitai-jima, and from 1684 the shogunate let it hold the spring and autumn kanjin sumo tournaments for about a century; the ranking lists and regular basho took shape here. A stone on the grounds, 3.5 meters tall and erected in 1900, carries the name of every yokozuna, and a new one is carved in with a ring-entering ceremony. By the great torii stands a statue of the surveyor Ino Tadataka, who prayed here before setting out on his mapping journeys. The main hall is under scaffolding for a major renovation planned to run to about June 2027. Come on the 1st, 15th or 28th for fair-day stalls, or on most Sundays for the antique market.