Musubu Shrine

15-minutes from the Hashima Interchange on the Meishin Expressway on Prefectural Route 18. Established in the late Heian period, the shrine is famous for granting worshippers luck in finding love and marriage. According to one theory, the shrine may even have been found a little before the distant Nara period. The shrine is also part of the legendary love story between Oguri Hangan and Princess Terute famously depicted in traditional joruri puppet and kabuki theater plays. In addition, the shrine is known as the place where the powerful samurai lord Oda Nobunaga prayed for victory prior to the Battle of Nagashino and the shrine still has a seal and spear from his visit. The shrine's popular ema votive tablets, used to pray for luck with love, are decorated with hearts and purchasers can have the small heart in the upper right side of the tablet cut out to take with them as an amulet.