About
What is Jisha?
Jisha (寺社, "temples and shrines") is a browsable database of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples across Japan — statistics, interactive maps, and place-by-place details for all 47 prefectures.
Enthusiasts can contribute: every place page has a suggestion form for details that map data doesn't carry — enshrined deities, sect, founding date, history. Suggestions are reviewed by a moderator before they appear.
Data sources & license
Base data comes from OpenStreetMap (elements tagged amenity=place_of_worship with religion=shinto or religion=buddhist), fetched via the Overpass API. Only places with a name in OpenStreetMap are listed. The database as a whole is a derivative of OSM data and is available under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0. © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Prefecture populations (used for per-capita figures) are from the Statistics Bureau of Japan, Population Estimates (October 2023). Map tiles are served by OpenFreeMap.
Community-contributed notes are published under CC BY-SA 4.0.
API
A read-only JSON API is available. Every response carries a meta object with source and license attribution. No key required; please be gentle.
| GET /api/stats | Totals and per-prefecture aggregates |
| GET /api/prefectures | 47 prefectures with counts |
| GET /api/places?pref=&kind=&q=&limit=&offset= | Paginated place list |
| GET /api/places/:id | Place detail incl. approved community notes |
| GET /api/map?bbox=w,s,e,n&kind= | GeoJSON for map rendering (grid-aggregated at low zoom) |
Tech stack
Bun · Hono (server-side JSX rendering) · Cloudflare Workers · Cloudflare D1 (SQLite) · Vite · Tailwind CSS v4 · MapLibre GL JS · Biome · Vitest. Pages are server-rendered first; JavaScript only adds map rendering, sorting and filtering on top.
Why this exists
Japan has more shrines and temples than convenience stores, yet there was no simple way to see them all at once — how they spread across the country, which prefectures are densest, what the data actually contains. Jisha was built to make that visible, and to give shrine-and-temple enthusiasts a place to fill in what open data still misses.
Contact: jisha@mori22.com