Dousojin received an enthusiastic welcome from people around the world when it appeared on the opening ceremony of the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. Full of impact yet somewhat humorous, Dousojin is enshrined at the root of a pine tree in Ashinosiri, looking on the beautiful mountainscape of the north Alps, on the roadside of the prefectural highway that connects the city office Ooka branch and Omi village, as if to steadily guard the region from calamities.