Enoshima Shrine: Wash Your Coins, Write One Character, Tie the Knot

The pool

Money is washed. The dragon guarding the pool is not the husband. He is the White Dragon King, one of Benzaiten's messengers: he works for her. Gold coins are said to be buried at the pool's source. Put your coins in one of the small baskets, rinse them in the water, and they are supposed to bring you luck.

Then comes the hard part. An offertory box stands in the middle of the pool. If your coin lands in it, the wish is said to come true.

The floor of the pool gives some idea of the odds.

I washed a coin and threw it.

The snakes

Written requests go to the Hōanden, an eight-sided hall beside Hetsumiya. Here, rows of small white snakes wait on a tray. The white snake is another of Benzaiten's messengers. Turn one over, write your wish on the bottom, and offer it in the hall.

The wish must fit into a single character. The sign gives examples, from business to family safety to a good catch of fish. A few of them would take some boiling down.

Inside the hall sit two statues of Benzaiten, both carved some seven or eight hundred years ago. One has eight arms. The other holds a biwa, a Japanese lute, and wears nothing at all. She is said to be one of the three great Benzaiten of Japan.

I went in. She was the most interesting thing there, and photography is not allowed.

The tree

Relationships are tied. In front of Yasaka Shrine, a small shrine in the same grounds, stands the Musubi tree: two ginkgo trunks growing from a single root. Musubi means tying, as in two people tied together.

Both trunks have been cut off, well above the ground. A sacred rope still runs between them, and below, the stand for wooden prayer plaques is packed on every side with pink ones.

The plaques sold for the tree show a heavenly maiden and a dragon, joined by a red thread. The sign beside them tells the rest. Long ago, an evil dragon fell in love with a heavenly maiden, Benzaiten, and became a good dragon so that they could marry. She is enshrined here, in the Hōanden. He is enshrined across the water, at Ryūkō Myōjinsha.

May you, the sign says, find a good match, like this couple who overcame their difficulties to be together.

The difficulty, in most tellings, was him.

Wash, write, tie. None of it takes more than a minute or two.