Tsuyu‑no‑Tenjinsha

Tsuyu no Tenjinsha, read Tsuyutenjinja, stands in a gap between office blocks at the south end of Umeda's Ohatsu Tenjin-dori shopping street. Its founding is said to go back more than 1,300 years, and it is the head tutelary shrine of Umeda and Sonezaki, anciently called Sonesu, enshrining Sukunahikona no Mikoto and Sugawara no Michizane. The name is traced to a poem Michizane composed when he stopped here in Shotai 4 (910) on his way into exile at Dazaifu: scattering like dew, his tears had rotted his sleeves away, when he called the capital to mind. The popular name Ohatsu Tenjin comes from Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who took the love suicide of Ohatsu, a courtesan of the Tenmaya in Dojima Shinchi, and Tokubei, a clerk at the Hiranoya in Uchihonmachi, which happened in the shrine's Tenjin no Mori grove on 7 April 1703, and made it into the play Sonezaki Shinju. The play was a great success and worshippers came in crowds. People still visit to pray that their love will be fulfilled.

Translated and shortened from the Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City tourist listings (観光施設一覧, CC BY 4.0).