The shrine is located in the western part of Tokushima City and next to a
Sengoku period mountain castle called "Ichinomiya Castle", which was controlled by the
Ogasawara clan. The shrine was established in the latter half of the
Heian period near the
provincial capital as the original
ichinomiya of the province, the
Ōasahiko Shrine was located in
Naruto and was considered to be inconveniently far from the capital. The shrine was intimately connected with the
Buddhist temple of
Dainichi-ji, which had been established in the early Heian period, and which was the 13th temple in the
Shikoku pilgrimage route. Under the premodern system of
shinbutsu-shūgō syncretism between Buddhism and Shinto, the
Juichimen Kannon was the principal object of worship at the shrine. The area was devastated by
Chōsokabe Motochika during the wars of the
Tenshō era. The shrine and temple were restored by
Hachisuka Mitsutaka, the
daimyō of
Tokushima Domain in the early
Edo period. With the
separation of Buddhism and Shinto in the early
Meiji period, the shrine and temple were separated, with the Juichiman Kannon transferred to the temple, where it displaced an image of Dainichi Nyorai as the
honzon of the temple. During the
Meiji period era of
State Shinto, the shrine was rated as a "prefectural shrine" under the
Modern system of ranked Shinto Shrines The
Honden of the shrine dates from 1630, and is designated as an National
Important Cultural Property. The shrine is 4.1 kilometers from
Kō Station on the
JR Shikoku Tokushima Line. ==Gallery==