Zeniarai Benten (Ugafuku Shrine)

photo by Koichi Shibata · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by baggio4ever · CC BY 3.0

For 700 years, people who wash their coins in the cave have believed they will come back multiplied.

You enter through a tunnel cut into the rock; inside the grounds, a cave holds the sacred spring. You take a wicker basket, put your banknotes and coins in it, and rinse them with water from the spring, using the wooden ladles hanging on the walls. The belief is that money washed here comes back multiplied: not straight away, but as it is spent wisely over time.

Founded, according to tradition, in 1185, after the deity Ugafukujin appeared to Minamoto no Yoritomo in a dream and asked him to worship the spring waters of the place to bring peace to the country. The coin-washing rite goes back to the fifth regent, Hōjō Tokiyori, who washed his own coins there to wish his clan prosperity.

ℹ️ Open 8:00–16:30, free entry (incense and candles 100 yen). About 20 minutes' walk from Kamakura Station, along an uphill path through the hills west of the city.

🚉 Kamakura · 17 min walk

Sources: shonan-el.co.jp · furu-po.com · jalan.net

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