Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine

This guide to Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine in Fukuoka follows Sugawara no Michizane, a brilliant Kyoto courtier exiled to this remote outpost after a rival clan's false accusations. You'll hear the poem he wrote to a plum tree the night before he left the capital, and how disasters back in Kyoto after his death were read as the fury of his wronged spirit. The guide traces how a disgraced scholar came to be worshipped as Tenjin, god of learning, at the shrine built over his grave.