One of Edo's foremost Tenmangu shrines, enshrining Sugawara no Michizane as the deity of learning. Countless students come to pray for success, and it is famed for the plum blossoms that evoke Michizane's scholarship.

In 1478, Ota Dokan, the builder of Edo Castle, is said to have rebuilt the halls of Yushima Tenjin. As he raised the castle he also developed the surrounding temples and shrines to lay the foundations of the castle town, and for the learning-loving Dokan this shrine to Tenjin, the deity of scholarship, is thought to have held special meaning.

After entering Edo Castle in 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu deeply revered this shrine, and in the eleventh month of 1591 he granted it a 5-koku vermilion-seal estate within Yushima Village to fund its rites. Successive shoguns renewed the seal charters, and revered by shogunal scholars such as Hayashi Razan and Arai Hakuseki as a patron of letters, Yushima Tenjin became one of Edo's foremost Tenmangu shrines.