The Tenkodo was the second of the Chinese shrines built within the walls of Tojin Yashiki, the compound that confined Chinese merchants and sailors in Nagasaki.
It was built in 1736 by shipowners from Nanking resident in the compound and it enshrines Mazu a Goddess of seafaring.
The shrine, along with the many of the other buildings, burned down in the great fire of 1784 and was rebuilt in 1790. The current building dates to 1906.
When the Chinese ships left China they carried a statue of the goddess Mazu, and when arriving in Nagasaki the statue would be brought into the Tenko-do, a ritual recreated each year during Nagasaki's Lantern Festival.
Also enshrined in the Tenkodo are statues of Guan Yin, the Goddess of mercy, and Guan Yu, a red-faced, bearded, general from the Three Kingdoms period revered as a god of prosperity.
The previous post in this series was the nearby
Dojindo Shrine, the first built in Tojin Yashiki.
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