In the fourth episode of K-ON!!, the Light Music Club members and their classmates visited one very famous Shinto shrine, Kitano Tenman-guu. The 4 of them, Yui, Mio, Ritsu, and Mugi wrote an ema (wishing plaque) and hung it in the shrine, in the anime. Not very surprisingly, it has triggered a chain of otaku visits to Kitano Tenman-guu. Of course, the devoted K-ON!! fans have put up their wishing plaques there, as K-ONbu girls did. Some of them draw inspiration from the wishing plaque as it is written in the anime; others write down their own ideas.Some info about Kitano Tenman-guu.It was built in 947, to appease the angry spirit of bureaucrat, scholar and poet Sugawara no Michizane, who had been exiled as a result of political maneuvers of his enemies in the Fujiwara clan.The shrine became the object of Imperial patronage during the early Heian period.[2] In 965, Emperor Murakami ordered that Imperial messengers were sent to report important events to the guardian kami of Japan. These heihaku were initially presented to 16 shrines;[3] and in 991, Emperor Ichijō added three more shrines to Murakami's list — including Kitano.[4]From 1871 through 1946, the Kitano Tenman-gū was officially designated one of the Kanpei-chūsha (官幣中社?), meaning that it stood in the second rank of government supported shrines.Source: Su-gomori
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