Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in Kamakura was founded in 1063 as a branch of Iwashimizu Shrine in Zaimokuza. Minamoto no Yoritomo, founder of the Kamakura shogunate, moved it to its present site in 1191. The current Senior Shrine was built in 1828 by Tokugawa Ienari, the 11th Tokugawa shōgun, in the hachiman-zukuri style. The article names no architect.
It was a shrine-temple with Buddhist architecture until the 1868 separation order, and the Buddhist buildings were destroyed afterward. A major fire struck on November 14, 1280. The Senior Shrine sits 61 steps above the Junior Shrine. The Wakamiya Ōji approach is 1.1 miles (1.8 km) long.
It is an active Shinto shrine that hosts festivals, yabusame and kyūdō, two museums and a kindergarten. A ginkgo near the stairway was uprooted on March 10, 2010. The story of an assassin hiding behind it is an Edo-period invention.
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