ujigami

Indeed, the word ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity, means 'family God,' and in its present form is a corruption or contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the god of the house.'

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

(Every village and town has at least one ujigami.)

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

People living within those districts are called ujiko, and the temple the ujigami, or dwelling-place of the tutelary god.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

It was at the neighbouring village, of which Suwa-Dai-Myojin seems to be the ujigami, that the Emperor Go-Toba is said to have dwelt, in the house of the Choja Shikekuro.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

They had come to town for the matsuri of our own ujigami, or parish-temple; and, as there were many curious things to be seen at the night festival, we started for the temple after dark, Kinjuro carrying a paper lantern painted with my crest.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

Now just as among the Greeks and Latins the family cult always continued to exist through all the development and expansion of the public religion, so the Shinto family worship has continued concomitantly with the communal worship at the countless ujigami, with popular worship at the famed Ohoya-shiro of various provinces or districts, and with national worship at the great shrines of Ise and Kitzuki.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

But upon the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth of each month the light is always kindled; for these are Shinto holidays of obligation, when offerings must be made to the gods, and when all uji - ko, or parishioners of a Shinto temple, are supposed to visit their ujigami.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

By degrees the ghost-house of the uji-no-kami became transformed into the modern Shinto parish-temple; and the ancestral spirit became the local tutelar god, whose modern appellation, ujigami, is but a shortened form of his ancient title, uji-no-kami.

Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation Lafcadio Hearn 1877