Ise Grand Shrine

Ise is the most sacred place in Shinto and, in a way, one of the newest: its principal buildings are torn down and rebuilt every twenty years. The current sanctuaries date from 2013, the sixty-second time the ritual of renewal, the Shikinen Sengū, has been carried out, and the next is planned for 2033. Each time, a new compound is raised on the empty plot beside the old one, in unpainted Japanese cypress, joined without nails, to exactly the same design. What is preserved is not the timber but the knowledge of how to make it, handed from carpenters who have built the shrine once to those who will build it next.

Ise Jingū is in fact a family of 125 shrines scattered around the city of Ise, held together by two great sanctuaries about six kilometres apart. The Gekū, or Outer Shrine, is dedicated to Toyouke, goddess of food and grain; the Naikū, or Inner Shrine, to Amaterasu, the sun goddess and mythical ancestor of the imperial line, and is said to hold the Sacred Mirror, one of the three imperial regalia. Tradition holds that the princess Yamatohime wandered for twenty years in search of a fitting home for the goddess before settling on the banks of the Isuzu River. The architectural form, a variant of shinmei-zukuri found only here, is the purest expression of early Japanese building: thatched gabled roofs with straight eaves, forked timbers crossing above the gables and short logs laid across the ridge, raised floors, and almost no ornament.

Visitors do not see the innermost sanctuaries, which sit behind several rings of fences, and that is part of the experience. At the Naikū the approach begins at the long wooden Uji Bridge, follows broad gravel paths through old forest, and passes the riverbank where pilgrims crouch to rinse their hands in the clear running water of the Isuzu. The restraint is striking after the colour of other Japanese shrines: bare wood, white gravel, deep shade. In the Edo period Ise drew pilgrims by the million, and the lane of old-style shops and teahouses leading to the Inner Shrine still keeps something of that crowded, festive spirit, with Edo- and Meiji-style wooden buildings along almost a kilometre of street.

Getting there

The shrines lie within the city of Ise in Mie Prefecture; the Gekū is about a ten-minute walk from Iseshi Station, and buses from the station run to the Naikū. Kintetsu limited express trains reach Ise from Nagoya in roughly an hour and a half and from Osaka in under two hours. The nearest international airport is Chubu Centrair (NGO), about 45 km away across Ise Bay.