Asakusa Shrine

This guide to Asakusa Shrine in Tokyo opens in the year 628, when two fishermen brothers pulled a golden statue of Kannon from the Sumida River, and the local landowner who recognized it and gave up his own house to enshrine it. It follows how that site became Senso-ji, and how, centuries later in 1649, the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered this shrine built to honor the three men as gods. Look at the woodwork around you as you listen for what this building has lived through.