Where there are shrines, temples and other places of worship in Asia, invariably there are markets. Japan is no different. Commerce flows in through the temple gates and then back out -- a cordial division of profits ensuing, generally to everyone's satisfaction.
It would be easy enough to sneak through the back streets of Dazaifu, entering its main drawcard, the Tenman-gu shrine, by a side gate, thereby avoiding the avenue of souvenir shops, with its three granite torii gates, and hawkers bellowing about the unassailable quality of their wind chimes and key rings -- but that would be to miss the fun of this temple market.
Dazaifu was once an important military and civil base of the Yamato government and an administrative center in the later Nara Period (710-784). The power and prestige, which governorship of this strategic and affluent town carried with it in the late Heian Period (794-1185) vanished, as Dazaifu increasingly began to be used as a convenient location to send troublesome religious or political figures. The poet, statesman and calligrapher Sugawara-no-Michizane (845-903) spent two years as governor at Dazaifu, in employed exile, before dying -- apparently, of grief.