Sugawara no Michizane was so intelligent that the Emperor highly recognized his talents and promoted him to a high position in the court. However, this led to tragedy: his rivals framed him with false accusations, resulting in his exile to Kyushu, far from Kyoto, where he later passed away.
After his death, his spirit was said to have ascended into the sky and become a vengeful god of thunder, striking his rivals’ homes with fierce thunderstorms. Terrified by these disasters, the people built this shrine to appease his spirit and worship him as the deity of thunder in the year of 947.
In fact, the name “Tenjin” originally means “the God of Thunder”!