Noritaka Kondo, shrine builder
For more than four decades, visitors to Point Defiance Park’s Japanese Garden have seen a small Shinto shrine gifted to Tacoma by its sister city, Kitakyushu, Japan. Now a new, hand-carved shrine has taken its place—made in Japan with a story that reaches across the Pacific and back to Tacoma’s history.
The original shrine and a torii gate arrived in 1961, when Tacoma and Kitakyushu exchanged gifts to mark their sister-city relationship. The shrine was moved to Point Defiance in 1982, but years of Northwest weather and wear left it badly deteriorated. Parks Tacoma says the original is now in secure storage, with no timeline set for its restoration.
The replacement was built by Noritaka Kondo, a master shrine builder from Kitakyushu with more than 40 years of experience in his family’s business. After visiting Tacoma to study the original, Kondo spent six months carving the new five-foot-tall structure. His high school woodworking students helped prepare the design blueprints. The new shrine uses natural wood and simpler carvings than the red-painted original.
The project grew from a partnership among Parks Tacoma, the Tacoma Sister City Commission and the Tacoma Parks Foundation, which raised funds for the work. The new shrine was designed to stay outdoors for about two weeks before being brought inside for winter protection. Its arrival continues a decades-long exchange between Tacoma and Kitakyushu—but what happens next to the original shrine remains an open question.
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