Fukunaga Shrine 福長神社

Two of these deities, Sakui and Tsunagai, were guardians of water in general and wells in particular. They are thought to have been moved to a shrine of their own—this one—at some point during the sixteenth century. Fukunaga Shrine is depicted in Scenes in and around the Capital, a famous folding-screen painting by Kano Eitoku (1543–1590) that portrays central Kyoto from a bird’s-eye perspective.

Fukunaga Shrine originally stood on spacious grounds that were reduced to their current size after much of the city burned down in a fire in 1788. The shrine now watches over the wells of its quiet neighborhood, rather than the wellbeing of the imperial family.