6 Love Shrines In Kyoto Believed To Bless Your Love Life

If you need a little boost in the romance department, love shrines in Kyoto are known to provide divine help. Want to pray for new love, strengthen a relationship or even to make a clean break? There is a deity out there that can help you with your wishes.

In this article, we’ve put together a list of love shrines in Kyoto that can hopefully help you in your love life, whether you’re single, in a relationship, or happily married. So if you’re want to ask for a little divine favour, make sure to bookmark this page so that you can pay a visit to these love shrines in Kyoto!

1. Jishu-Jinja Shrine

Located inside Kiyomizu Temple, the Jishu Shrine houses various deities that one can pray to for different love-related requests. The most popular of them all are the love stones, two stones placed about ten meters apart from each other. 

Word is, if you can walk safely from one stone to the other with your eyes shut, then you’ll find your match on your own. However, if you have someone assist you, then it implies that there needs to be outside help in your love life.

2. Yasaka Shrine

Yasaka Shrine houses the married gods of Susanoo and Kushinada-hime. Many people come here to pray for their marriage to be successful like the gods’. Make sure to stop by Okuninushisha within the shrine, where you’ll find many young women praying for good luck in their marriage. 

On the east side of the main shrine, you can find a smaller shrine called Utsukushi-gozen. Word has it that if you put the water at this shrine to your skin, you’ll not only have beautiful skin, but your heart will become more beautiful too. These things probably help in finding a good marriage partner!

3. Yasui Konpira-gu Shrine

In order to have a good relationship, you have to cleanly cut ties with any past bad relationships. The place for this is Yasui Konpira-gu Shrine. Within this shrine, you’ll find a stone monument covered with paper amulets. This is the Enkiri Enmusubi Ishi (縁切り縁結び碑), which means the stone of severing and tying connections.

Hold a paper amulet with your wish written on it. By crawling through this stone from the front, locals believe you’ll be able to free yourself from bad luck. And by crawling through the stone from the back, you’ll open yourself up to good luck. Afterwards, pin your amulet on the stone along with the thousands on it.

This shrine isn’t just for cutting ties with past relationships! It also provide help in other areas, like health issues or getting over bad habits. 

4. Matsuno’o Taisha Shrine

The Matsuno’o Taisha Shrine is famous for the waters within its grounds which enshrines the deity of sake (Japanese rice wine). What makes this place a blessing for lovers is the pair of 350-year-old pine trees that intertwines together . The conjoined tree is the Enmusubi (縁結び) or marriage spot, and is a symbol of marital union and romantic fulfilment.

There are also other spots within the grounds that could help in speeding things up in your love life, like the statues of a turtle and a pair of goldfish that you can rub for good luck.

5. Imamiya Jinja Shrine

The Imamiya Jinja Shrine has a nickname: Tama no Koshi Shrine, which translates to “marry a man of wealth”.

The story behind this is that there was a daughter of a grocer who lived near the shrine known as Otama. Otama became the concubine of the shogun and was later the mother of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. Since then, whenever a woman was married to a wealthy man and ascended to a higher social status, they were called “tama no mikoshi”.

You can see the reason for this shrine’s popularity. Women visit in hopes of being as lucky as Otama and finding a wonderful prospective husband!

6. Kifune Shrine

Izumi Shikibu, the famous poet of the Heian period, is said to have visited the after her husband lost interest in her. After praying at the shrine, the marriage went on smoothly. 

Here you can obtain a unique kind of fortune known as the Mizu Uranai Mikuji (水占みくじ). When you purchase your omikuji – a piece of paper where your fortune is written – you’ll find that it’s blank. You have to steep it in the water of the shrine, and your fortune (plus valuable insights into your love life) will appear. The fortunes here are said to be very accurate. There’s even a QR code so you can read your fortune in English!