Ōmiwa Shrine stands in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, and is one of the oldest extant Shinto shrines in Japan. It was the chief shrine of the former Yamato Province and is the tutelary shrine of Japanese sake brewers. It received imperial patronage in the early Heian period, and from 1871 to 1946 it held the first rank among government-supported shrines.
The shrine has no main sanctuary and no sacred images. Mount Miwa itself is the object of worship, and the torii doors bar access to the mountain. The prayer hall dates from the seventeenth century and has a cypress bark roof. The torii on the approach is 105 feet (32 meters) tall, the second tallest in Japan.
The grounds include twelve auxiliary shrines and twenty-eight branch shrines, and an ancient Japanese cedar is considered sacred. Visitors may climb the mountain with same-day arrangement through the Sai Jinja office.
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