Mt Miwa, a beautiful conical mountain (467m / 1532ft) north of the city of Sakurai, at the eastern edge of the Yamato basin in Nara Prefecture, is an important sacred mountain, home to one of Japan's earliest Shinto shrines, called Omiwa or "Great Deity." The whole mountain is sacrosanct and entry is in principle forbidden even today.

[The Haiden of Omiwa Jinja]
An alternative name for Mt Miwa is Mimoro (Mimuro), which means "August Hall." Mt Miwa serves as the shintai (object of veneration, or "kami-body") of that shrine. On the western slope is Japan's most ancient road, known as the Yamanobe no Michi, which is already mentioned in the Manyoshu poetry collection of about 759. Several large burial mounds from the early Kofun period (2nd half 3rd c. - 4th c. CE) can be found around the mountain.
[The tip of Mt Miwa seen from Yamanobe no Michi]
The deity enshrined here is Omononushi (or Onamuchi), also identified with the Izumo kami Okuninushi, the leader of the earthly deities. In Kojiki (712) and Nihon shoki (720), the kami of Miwa emerges as the prototypical earthly deity, or as John Breen and Mark Teeuwen write in A New History of Shinto (p. 71): a violent force that the early Yamato kings struggled to control. In one story the Miwa kami transforms himself into a red arrow and impregnates a beautiful maiden while she is defecating in a ditch (before the advent of water closets riversides and ditches often served the purpose of natural toil...