Yasui Konpira-gū

The shrine describes the stone as a giant boulder in the shape of an ema, the wooden plaque that carries prayers at Japanese shrines. A crack runs down from the top, and the shrine says the deity's power travels along it into the round hole at the center. The slips pasted over it, by the shrine's own examples, range from "May I marry so-and-so and be happy" to "Please cut the tie between my husband and his lover."

The rite

The shrine sets out the order. Visitors pray at the main hall first. They take a katashiro, a paper slip that stands in for the person making the wish, from a stand to the left of the stone, leaving at least 100 yen in the offering box, and write on it the tie they want cut or the tie they want made. Holding the slip and keeping the wish in mind, they crawl through the hole from front to back, which cuts the bad tie, then from back to front, which forms the good one. The slip goes anywhere on the stone.

The ties the shrine offers to cut include illness, alcohol, tobacco, and gambling, as well as ties between people. It tells couples who visit together that the rite will not split them, and that it binds them closer.

For people who cannot come, the shrine performs prayers by registered mail, for 6,000 yen over 3 days up to 30,000 yen over a month. For a tie-cutting prayer that involves another person, the form asks for that person's name, address, and date of birth, as far as the sender knows them.

Why this shrine cuts ties

The principal deity is Emperor Sutoku, who reigned from 1123 to 1141, lost the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156, and died in exile in Sanuki, now Kagawa Prefecture. The shrine's account is that he cut himself off from every desire while in retreat at Kotohira-gū in Sanuki, which is why the shrine has long been a place to vow to give something up. War also parted him from a favored consort, and the shrine says he cuts the bad ties that stand between people so that nobody suffers what he did. The shrine names that consort Awa no Naishi; Kyoto city's tourism listing names her Karasumaru-dono.

The site's history, in the shrine's and the city's telling, starts with a hall built by Fujiwara no Kamatari between 668 and 671 and planted with purple wisteria. In 1177, a priest named Daien reported that Sutoku had appeared to him there, and a temple, Kōmyōin Kanshōji, was built on the order of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa; the city dates its construction to between 1275 and 1277. The Ōnin War of 1467 to 1477 left it in ruins. In 1695, the temple Rengekō-in moved here from Uzumasa Yasui and enshrined Sutoku alongside Ōmononushi, brought from Kotohira-gū, and Minamoto no Yorimasa, which is where the name "Yasui no Konpira-san" comes from. After the Meiji Restoration, the temple was abolished and the shrine became Yasui Jinja. The city's listing says it took the name Yasui Konpira-gū after World War II. The shrine calls itself the only Konpira shrine within Kyoto city.

A wooden board that stood beside the stone in 2012, written by a former chief priest, said that vows to give things up had been made here since the Edo period and that the tie-cutting prayer grew out of them. The same board said the stone is purified at every morning's worship.

The Olympics slip

On June 15, 2021, a post on Twitter reported slips on the stone reading "Dissolve the JOC" and "Stop the Olympics." Within 2 days, the Kyoto Shimbun counted 17,000 retweets and more than 29,000 likes. A reporter who went at about noon on June 17 found one such slip: "Please call off this Olympics after all."

The chief priest told the paper he had not known it was being talked about, and that people ask for all kinds of things. "Whether the Olympics are canceled or held is something only the eight million gods know," he said. "I only hope the right decision is made."

The grounds are open around the clock and free, and the rite at the stone can be done at any hour, with slips left out at the stand all day. The amulet office is open 9am to 5:30pm. The amulet for cutting bad ties and the one for binding good ones are 500 yen each, and they are the only two the shrine will send by mail.

The hole is low and fits one adult at a time, so the crawl means getting down on hands and knees on a stone step set in white gravel. It's best practice to ask before photographing someone mid-crawl.

The shrine's ema museum, which opened in 1976 and which the shrine bills as the first ema gallery in Japan, is open 10am to 4pm and closed Mondays (Tuesdays when Monday is a holiday) and at year-end. Admission is 500 yen for adults, 400 yen for high school students and younger, and free for preschool children. The ticket also covers a glass room where Dale Chihuly's "Sea God" sits beneath a 3 by 4 meter glass floor. The shrine suggests about 30 minutes for the museum and 10 for the glass room.

City Bus 206 from Kyoto Station stops at Higashiyama Yasui, a 1-minute walk south by the shrine's count and 3 minutes by the city's. Gion-Shijō station on the Keihan line is about 10 minutes on foot according to the shrine and 20 according to the city, and Kawaramachi on the Hankyū line is about 15. There is parking for cars. Kennin-ji is about 5 minutes away on foot, and Yasaka Shrine and Kōdai-ji about 10.

About 10,000 people come over the first 3 days of the New Year. The spring festival on May 10 includes a 1pm fire rite in front of the stone, burning wooden sticks inscribed with people's wishes. On the 4th Monday of September, the Kushi Matsuri gives thanks for worn-out combs and hairpins, and at 2pm a procession in historical hairstyles walks through Gion unless it rains.