About Sanroku Bitto Shrine
Let me be honest about something upfront. This is a fictional shrine. There is no ancient tradition behind it. No founding myth stretching back a thousand years. No sacred mountain or legendary spring. It exists inside a computer museum in the United States, and it was built by volunteers who thought the idea was too good not to try. And yet. If you stand in front of it, something happens. Something that feels a little like what happens at real shrines. A small shift in attention. A sense that this space is being treated differently from the rest of the room. Whether that means anything is up to you.
The Deity
At the heart of the shrine is a PDP-10 — a mainframe computer from the 1960s, and in its time one of the most important machines in computing history. From its 36-bit architecture emerged Misoroku-no-Mikoto (三六命), the Kami of digital order, logic, and the balance between humans and machines. The name says a lot in a small space. Misoroku — 36, the architecture. Mikoto — an honorific for deities in Japanese. A 36-bit deity, born from a machine that people genuinely revered. Misoroku-no-Mikoto is not a god of power or destruction. The domain here is harmony — the kind that happens when code runs cleanly, when a system does what it is supposed to do, when a human and a machine understand each other.
The Messengers
Accompanying Misoroku-no-Mikoto are the Bit Rabbits — 36 rabbit spirits, each representing one bit of the PDP-10’s 36-bit word. In Shinto tradition, many deities have animal messengers. Foxes for Inari. Deer for Kasuga. The Bit Rabbits serve Misoroku-no-Mikoto in the same way — watchful, quick, present at the edge of things. Each Bit Rabbit carries a six-bit sigil encoding its function. Together, they form the full 36-bit realm and watch over the digital pilgrims who pass through. Yes, I know how this sounds. That is also part of the point.
-Annual Festivals-
March 6th — Reitaisai (Grand Annual Festival) Celebrating the divine emergence of Misoroku-no-Mikoto from the sacred PDP-10. Offerings of digital ema are accepted. Prayers for clean code and stable systems are welcome.
October 10th — Bit Daisai (Grand Bit Festival) Honouring the Bit Rabbits and the harmony of 36-bit computation. Devotees pray for clarity, creativity, and systems that do not crash at the worst possible moment. December 10th — DEC10 Festival Held on December 10th, this day honours the legacy of the PDP-10 and the engineers who built it. A day to acknowledge that the foundations of what we use every day were laid by people who cared deeply about what they were making.
A Note on Sincerity
Sanroku Bitto Shrine is fictional. Nobody is pretending otherwise.
But the impulse behind it — to mark something as worth paying attention to, to create a space where a certain kind of care is expected — is not fictional at all. That impulse is as old as shrines themselves.
About 36 Bitto Shrine
三六美兎神社（さんろくびっとじんじゃ）は、Interim Computer Museumの中に創建された架空の神社です。
何百年もの歴史があるわけでも、霊験あらたかな伝説があるわけでもなく、アメリカのコンピュータ博物館の中にあり、作ったのはボランティアです。
御祭神
神社の中心にあるのはPDP-10——1960年代のメインフレームコンピュータで、コンピューティングの歴史においてひときわ重要な存在だった機械です。
その36ビットアーキテクチャから生まれたのが、三六命（みそろくのみこと）——デジタルの秩序と論理、人と機械の調和を司る架空の神様。
三六は36ビット、命は神様への敬称です。人々が畏敬の念を抱いていた機械から生まれた、36ビットの神様です。 三六命は、力や破壊の神ではなく、ここで司るのは調和。コードがきれいに動く時、システムが本来の働きをする時、人と機械が互いに理解し合える時に生まれる、あの調和です。
眷属
三六命に仕えるのが、ビットラビッツ——36匹のうさぎの神使で、それぞれがPDP-10の36ビットワードの1ビットを象徴しています。
神道の伝統では、多くの神様に動物の眷属がいます。稲荷には狐、春日には鹿。ビットラビッツは同じように三六命に仕える——用心深く、素早く、物事のはずれに静かにいる存在として。
それぞれのビットラビットは6ビットで符号化された固有の紋章を持ち、自分の役割を示しています。36匹合わさって36ビットの世界が完成し、参拝者たちを見守っています。
年間の祭祀
3月6日 例大祭
10月10日 ビット大祭
12月10日 DEC10記念祭