Osaka Museum of Housing and Living 9th floor
Exhibition Hall 1: Osaka in the Early Modern Period
Time travel back to Edo Period
Summer Festival Decorations
13. Tenjin-maru
Tenjin-maru that the Osaka Tenman-gū shrine possesses is a huge (8m-long, 2m-wide and 3m-high) ship-shaped portable shrine.
It is modelled after a goza-bune, which is a luxurious boat reserved for nobles such as daimyō feudal lords from Japan’s western region who frequently visited their Osaka kura-yashiki city warehouses.
The portable shrine used to be brought out on display and pulled through the neighborhood during the Tenjin Matsuri festival.
But it was half-burnt at the time of great fire in Tenma in the fourth year of Kansei years (A.D. 1792).
A full restoration work was subsequently initiated in the seventh year of Meiji years (A.D. 1874) and restored Tenjin-maru was finally on display upon the shōsengū formal transfer of shrine of Osaka Tenman-gū shrine in the eleventh year of Meiji years (A.D. 1878).
After it was set up and last seen on display in the fifteenth year of Taishō years (A.D. 1926), however, Tenjin-maru was not brought out on display for the Tenjin Matsuri festival.
It was then discovered sitting deep in the warehouse of the Osaka Tenman-gū shrine in the eleventh year of Heisei years (A.D. 1999) after 73 years of missing status.
It was again restored in time for the opening of this Osaka Museum of Housing and Living (a.k.a. Konjyakukan) in the thirteenth year of Heisei years (A.D. 2001) and was designated as a tangible folk-cultural property by the Osaka City Government in the same year.
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