Menu Close

Chiba Shrine

Around Chiba Station

In the late Heian period, Taira no Yoshibumi, who ruled over much of southern Kantō, prayed to Lord Myōken before every battle and received divine protection, always achieving great victories. Descended from Lord Yoshibumi, the Chiba clan enshrined Lord Myōken as the guardian deity of their clan and retainers in various locations, offering fervent devotion through the generations.

During the time of Taira no Tadatune, the third generation of the Chiba clan, a shrine enshrining a branch spirit (a manifestation) of Myoken-sama was built by the Chiba clan on a section of Mount Kandori, within the precincts of Katori Shrine, which was enshrined in the Chiba region. (Date unknown)

When Emperor Ichijō, the 66th emperor, who suffered from an eye disease, prayed at this shrine for his recovery, his illness was instantly cured. In gratitude, Emperor Ichijō bestowed a thin ink imperial edict and the temple name “Hokutosan Kongōju-ji.”

Lord Tsunenori, wishing to match the honor of the bestowed temple name, fully developed the temple grounds. He appointed his second son, Kakusan, as the chief priest. On the 13th day of the 9th month of the old calendar in the 2nd year of Chōhō (1000 AD), he reestablished and founded “Hokutosan Kongōju-ji.”

(Omitted) In 1869 (Meiji 2), following the Bakumatsu period, the Meiji government issued the “Decree Separating Shinto and Buddhism,” which clearly distinguished between shrines and temples, whose boundaries had been ambiguous at the time.After deliberation among the priests, representatives, and parishioners, it was decided that since the Mikoshi procession during the Myoken Grand Festival followed shrine traditions, the centuries-old festival would be preserved. The site was renamed “Chiba Shrine” and became a shrine, a status it holds to this day. (Translated from the “History” section of the Chiba Shrine official website)

※Chiba City Arts Triennale 2025 will be held at select venues.


Address: 1-16-1 Inai, Chuo-ku, Chiba-shi, Chiba
Access
【Rail】13-minute walk from JR Chiba Station or Keisei Chiba Station
【Bus】1-minute walk from “Inai-cho” bus stop
Stopping routes (departing from JR Chiba Station East Exit)
・ Platform 6: Keisei Bus Chiba East bound for “Chiba Station North Exit / Nishi-Chiba Station”

※For inquiries regarding the Chiba City Arts Triennale 2025, please use Contact Form. Please refrain from contacting individual facilities or venues directly.


Web site

Projects at This Base

Rolling Landscape 2025_Chiba City

Around Chiba Station
Rolling Landscape 2025_Chiba City is an art project that aims to make visible, share, and preserve the invisible memories that accumulate in the city every day. Although cities are places that are constantly changing, the residents and substances there bear traces of time. This work attempts to reconsider the relationship between cities and individuals by looking at the memories and questions buried under that daily life. Underlying the work is an interest in the structure where changing and fixed memories in the city intersect. A multilayered urban landscape is formed by the temporary traces of people who visit and leave Chiba every day for sightseeing or transporting goods, and the memories of long-term residents. The area around Chiba Station, the setting for the work, is a node connecting the Boso Peninsula and the Tokyo area, and a place where different kinds of people come and go. As people from diverse backgrounds, including essential workers, visit each day, the countless vestiges of their movements and existences accumulate in layers over the cityscape. The project focuses on the fluidity of the city and the individual traces that lie under the surface. At the core of the project is artist Yohei Chimura’s act of moving through the urban space around Chiba Station while rolling a glass tire. A small camera attached to the tire shaft records the scenery through the glass, and the images reveal a distorted reflection of the cityscape. The glass used to create the tire comes in part from dust collected from roads around the station in cooperation with locals. It forms an attempt to make visible the tiny traces of the city that amass daily in this key transportation hub. In the exhibition, the glass tire will be shown alongside footage of the landscape. The traces of abrasion etched into the glass of the tire seem to mirror the distorted landscape captured in the footage, giving viewers a sense of newly perceiving the city on a different level. The essence of this work lies not in trying to solve social issues directly, but rather in taking up the questions hidden under everyday life and triggering realizations and dialogue among viewers. As part of the local research, Chimura also plans to make another glass tire with sand collected from the shoes of elementary school students in the city. During the exhibition, visitors will be able to freely roll this tire around the city, providing a place where to experience new connections with the local environment and memories. [Types of citizen involvement] Collecting materials, Rolling the tire
More details

Exhibitions and events at this base