Awa Jinja

Awa Jinja.

At the southern tip of the Boso Peninsula in Chiba — where the warm currents of the Pacific meet the deep green hills of Japan — sits a shrine whose history is, quietly, a story of migration.

Two thousand years ago, according to old records, a community of weavers and craftspeople from the kingdom of Awa, on the island of Shikoku, sailed across the Inland Sea, around Honshu, and arrived on this exact coast. They brought with them their old crafts, their old prayers, their old gods. They built a new home in this place, on the warm green hills, and called it Awa — after the place they had left.

That is why, even today, two distinct places in Japan are called Awa. The original on Shikoku. And this one, the new Awa, on the eastern coast of Honshu.

The shrine is the oldest part of the new Awa. The community that arrived built it on this exact site to honor what they had brought with them.

Around the shrine grounds, the vegetation looks slightly tropical. Camellias bloom in winter. Plumeria-like white flowers from imported trees. The southern peninsula is warm enough that the air does, briefly, feel like somewhere else.

Caves nearby have yielded human remains from both the Jomon and the Yayoi eras — twenty thousand years of continuous human presence on this same coast.

Stand on the soil. The waves are close. The sea wind reaches the main hall.

Some places remember exactly where their ancestors came from.