This paper is a study of the Shinto shrine called Kubitsuka Daimyoujin which is located in the Nishikyo-ku ward in the city of Kyoto, in Kyoto prefecture. This small shrine is standing in the abandoned place and looks as a forgotten one, but it is preserved by several people, the descendants of those families, who were managing tea stalls and Japanese-style hotels in the neighborhood several hundred years ago. Moreover, there is an annual festival being held on the 15th of April, which gathers about 80 people, including visitors from other prefectures close to Kyoto. The name of the shrine can be translated as "The Shrine of the Great Deity of Head Mound". There is a mound on the back of the small shrine and the legend says that the chopped head of the terrible ogre, Shutendoji, is buried here. Shutendoji and his dependants lived in the mountain Oe and were bothering people of Kyoto by robbery and kidnapping, but were subjugated by military commanders Minamoto no Yorimitsu, his surbodinates and Fujiwara no Yasumasa. The group of Yorimitsu took the chopped head of Shutendoji to transport it to the capital as an evidence of victory, but the Koyasu Jizo Bodhisattva on their way told them that such impure thing as an ogre's head shouldn't be shown to the Emperor, and the head suddenly became too heavy, so they had to bury it. The place they buried it is exactly the mound of Kubitsuka Damyoujin, where Shutendoji is worshipped as a deity healing illnesses concerning head and brain and also as a deity of scholarship.
The legend of Shutendoji tells us about the times of the Heian period, but it is thought that the legend itself formed later, in Kamakura period. However, it is not clear when the head mound and the shrine appeared, and the episode concerning the buried head is not mentioned in the texts until the end of seventeenth century. The aim of this paper is to find what was in the background of forming the legend about the buried head and constructing the shrine. Through analyzing the strong connection of the shrine with such believes as the deity of borders Dosojin, the guardian deity of children Jizo and the other world, I'm making a conclusion that the legend of the buried head came out as a result of concentrating and transformation of these believes.
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