Japan has more Shinto shrines than Buddhist temples, and most of them are nowhere near Kyoto. The national count follows old villages, a Meiji-era campaign that closed tens of thousands of shrines, and places where the survey does not reach.
80,484 shrine organizations · 47 prefectures · December 2024The report
Niigata comes before Kyoto.
Niigata, on the Sea of Japan coast, has 4,654 Shinto shrine organizations. That is more than Kyoto, Nara and Mie combined, the homes of Fushimi Inari, Kasuga Taisha and Ise Jingu. Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2025 Religion Yearbook, printed page 38.
Across Japan the yearbook counted 80,484 shrines at the end of 2024, slightly more than the 76,332 Buddhist temples in the same survey. After Niigata come Hyogo with 3,854, Fukuoka with 3,399, Aichi with 3,351 and Gifu with 3,255. Kyoto has 1,757. Religion Yearbook, printed page 34.
The count measures organizations, not fame. A great shrine with a festival that draws crowds counts once. So does a small village shrine looked after by a few households.
The shrines that were merged away
Japan once had far more. From 1906 the government pushed villages to merge their shrines, aiming for one per community. By 1914 the national total had fallen from about 200,000 to about 120,000. Kokugakuin University, Encyclopedia of Shinto.
Wakayama and Mie enforced the policy harder than anywhere else. Of the roughly 10,000 shrines at prefectural rank or below in the two prefectures, about 1,300 remained by 1914. Today the yearbook counts 440 in Wakayama and 844 in Mie, 1,284 together. More than a century later, their totals are still close to where the mergers left them.
The naturalist Minakata Kumagusu fought the mergers in Wakayama, arguing that they destroyed historic sites and the old forests around shrines along with the rare species living in them. He was jailed for 18 days in 1910. In 1920 the House of Peers resolved that the mergers were of no benefit, and the campaign ended. Minakata Kumagusu Museum.
The mergers explain the low end of the map better than the top. The yearbook does not say why Niigata, Hyogo or Fukuoka kept so many shrines.
Interactive atlas
Shrine counts and density.
Compare absolute counts with organizations per 100 km². The survey counts organizations; it does not assess religious importance or visitor experience.
Shinto-affiliated organizations classified as shrines in the Religion Yearbook. Not a count of torii gates.
Niigata · 4,654 shrine organizations
Compare all 47 prefectures
| Prefecture | Shrine organizations | Per 100 km² | Incorporated shrines | Land area · km² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hokkaido | 790 | 0.95 | 783 | 83,422 |
| Aomori | 885 | 9.18 | 884 | 9,645 |
| Iwate | 863 | 5.65 | 860 | 15,274 |
| Miyagi | 944 | 12.97 | 942 | 7,281 |
| Akita | 1,144 | 9.83 | 1,143 | 11,638 |
| Yamagata | 1,742 | 18.68 | 1,741 | 9,323 |
| Fukushima | 3,003 | 21.79 | 3,001 | 13,783 |
| Ibaraki | 2,486 | 40.77 | 2,486 | 6,098 |
| Tochigi | 1,909 | 29.79 | 1,904 | 6,408 |
| Gunma | 1,213 | 19.07 | 1,213 | 6,362 |
| Saitama | 2,016 | 53.08 | 2,011 | 3,798 |
| Chiba | 3,173 | 61.53 | 3,170 | 5,156 |
| Tokyo | 1,453 | 66.05 | 1,448 | 2,200 |
| Kanagawa | 1,148 | 47.51 | 1,137 | 2,417 |
| Niigata | 4,654 | 36.98 | 4,654 | 12,584 |
| Toyama | 2,264 | 53.3 | 2,264 | 4,248 |
| Ishikawa | 1,872 | 44.67 | 1,869 | 4,191 |
| Fukui | 1,706 | 40.71 | 1,706 | 4,191 |
| Yamanashi | 1,280 | 28.67 | 1,274 | 4,465 |
| Nagano | 2,454 | 18.1 | 2,454 | 13,562 |
| Gifu | 3,255 | 30.65 | 3,255 | 10,621 |
| Shizuoka | 2,838 | 36.49 | 2,838 | 7,777 |
| Aichi | 3,351 | 64.78 | 3,350 | 5,173 |
| Mie | 844 | 14.62 | 843 | 5,774 |
| Shiga | 1,441 | 35.87 | 1,440 | 4,017 |
| Kyoto | 1,757 | 38.1 | 1,755 | 4,612 |
| Osaka | 730 | 38.31 | 728 | 1,905 |
| Hyogo | 3,854 | 45.88 | 3,849 | 8,401 |
| Nara | 1,376 | 37.28 | 1,376 | 3,691 |
| Wakayama | 440 | 9.31 | 438 | 4,725 |
| Tottori | 818 | 23.32 | 818 | 3,507 |
| Shimane | 1,170 | 17.44 | 1,170 | 6,708 |
| Okayama | 1,645 | 23.12 | 1,645 | 7,114 |
| Hiroshima | 2,652 | 31.28 | 2,652 | 8,478 |
| Yamaguchi | 750 | 12.27 | 750 | 6,113 |
| Tokushima | 1,286 | 31.01 | 1,286 | 4,147 |
| Kagawa | 773 | 41.19 | 772 | 1,877 |
| Ehime | 1,241 | 21.86 | 1,240 | 5,676 |
| Kochi | 2,145 | 30.2 | 2,145 | 7,102 |
| Fukuoka | 3,399 | 68.15 | 3,399 | 4,987 |
| Saga | 1,104 | 45.23 | 1,104 | 2,441 |
| Nagasaki | 1,323 | 32.02 | 1,323 | 4,131 |
| Kumamoto | 1,387 | 18.72 | 1,386 | 7,409 |
| Oita | 2,103 | 33.17 | 2,103 | 6,341 |
| Miyazaki | 672 | 8.69 | 672 | 7,734 |
| Kagoshima | 1,117 | 12.16 | 1,116 | 9,186 |
| Okinawa | 14 | 0.61 | 14 | 2,282 |
No matching prefecture.
2025 Religion Yearbook · December 2024 snapshot
Reading the data
Fukuoka leads by density.
Divide each count by land area and the order changes. Fukuoka has 68.15 shrine organizations per 100 km², followed by Tokyo at 66.05, Aichi at 64.78, Chiba at 61.53 and Toyama at 53.30. These are our calculations using the yearbook counts and GSI’s April 2026 prefecture areas.
The area includes mountains and other places where nobody lives, so a low density does not mean shrines are scarce in any particular town. It also says nothing about attendance, the number of buildings, or how far one shrine is from the next. Tokyo ranks high partly because it is small: 1,453 shrines in a prefecture of about 2,200 km².
Why the unit is an organization
In the decades before 1945, shrines were administered by the state through a Shrine Bureau in the Home Ministry. After the war they were separated from government and became independent religious bodies. Jinja Honcho, a national association founded in 1946, now counts more than 78,000 member shrines. Nippon.com, 2025.
That is why the national count is a count of organizations. The yearbook collects figures on religious bodies, and 80,411 of the 80,484 shrines are registered religious corporations. A shrine with several buildings is one entry. A shrine that shares a priest with a dozen others is still its own entry.
For your journey
What the count cannot contain.
The survey is built around religious corporations and the organizations attached to them, and it leaves out some groups with no corporate status. It is not an inventory of every roadside shrine, sacred grove or torii. Survey scope, printed page 28.
Okinawa shows the limit most clearly. It has 14 organizations in this category. The Ryukyu Kingdom’s sacred places, the utaki, belong to a different tradition; Sēfa-utaki is part of a World Heritage site, but it is not a shrine in this table. UNESCO.
At the gate
Jinja Honcho describes the torii as the boundary between everyday space and the sacred space of a shrine. Many visitors pause and bow slightly before walking through, then rinse their hands and mouth at the water basin. Jinja Honcho: entering a jinja.
At the hall, the usual form of prayer is to make an offering, bow twice, clap twice and bow once more. Jinja Honcho Q&A. It takes a few seconds, and it works the same way at a famous shrine in Kyoto as at one of Niigata’s 4,654.
The sourcebook
Sources &
calculations.
Checked September 24, 2026.
Download the data- Source: Agency for Cultural Affairs, 2025 Religion Yearbook. The statistical reference date is December 31, 2024.
- We transcribe the Shinto-affiliated shrine-organization column from printed page 38 (PDF page 52), rather than the all-affiliations shrine total. All 47 rows sum to 80,484, and its incorporated subset sums to 80,411. Every row was re-checked against the yearbook on September 24, 2026.
- The Buddhist temple comparison (76,332) is the Buddhist-affiliated temple column on printed page 40 of the same yearbook.
- Density = shrine organizations ÷ prefecture area in km² × 100, rounded to two decimals. Areas use the GSI April 1, 2026 survey; some are reference estimates because of unsettled boundaries.
- The map does not locate individual shrines. It is not a complete count of physical sacred sites, an attendance measure, or an assessment of religious belief.
Primary counts: printed page 38 / PDF page 52. Shinto and Buddhist totals: printed pages 34 and 40. Scope: printed page 28.
National and Wakayama–Mie shrine totals before and after the Meiji mergers.
Minakata’s campaign and the 1920 House of Peers resolution.
Prefecture area denominators, page 1; areas marked with an asterisk are reference estimates.
The torii as a boundary, and the bow–clap–bow form of prayer.
More than 78,000 member shrines (July 2025).
Includes Sēfa-utaki.
Map outlines use the Almanac’s prefecture geometry package.
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