Shinto shrine

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Shinto shrines dot the Japanese landscape by the hundreds of thousands, from grand complexes drawing millions of pilgrims to tiny roadside huts barely large enough to shelter a carved stone. At last count, there are an estimated 100,000 of them across Japan, and that figure counts only the ones with resident priests. Add the small household and roadside shrines and the number doubles. What is it that all these structures, grand and humble alike, are actually doing? What do they house, and why does housing it require such care? The answers reach back to the Yayoi period, to the moment when rice-farming communities first felt the need to attract invisible powers to their fields, and they lead forward to a tradition so resistant to change that the same architectural forms used in ancient times are still being faithfully rebuilt today.

• 2. Sacred Ground and Sacred Object

  ›

  At the heart of every shrine is a shintai, a word that translates literally as 'body of a kami'. The shintai is a physical object in which a kami, one of the deities of Shinto, is believed to reside. Mirrors, swords, comma-shaped jewels called magatama, and ceremonial wands called gohei are among the most common. So are mountains, waterfalls, and large trees. Mount Fuji itself qualifies as a shintai, as does Mount Miwa near Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara. The key distinction is that the shintai is not the kami itself; it is a repository, a place where the kami can be present and therefore accessible to human beings.

  Nachi Falls, near Kumano Nachi Taisha, shows how naturally a shintai can arise. The falls are believed to be inhabited by a kami called Hiryū Gongen, and Hiryū Shrine was built nearby to worship them. No human intervention was required to create the sacred object; the falls were simply recognized as already inhabited.

  When a shrine has more than one building, the one containing the shintai is called the honden. Because the honden is meant exclusively for the kami, it is always closed to the public and never used for prayer or ceremonies. The shintai leaves it only during festivals, when it is placed inside a portable shrine called a mikoshi and carried through the streets. The portable shrine both protects the shintai and hides it from view.

• 3. From Sacred Grove to Permanent Building

  ›

  Village council sessions in the Yayoi period were held in quiet mountain spots or forests near great trees and other natural objects that served as yorishiro, objects believed capable of attracting kami. Those gathering places did not look like shrines as anyone would recognize them today. True shrines arose with the beginning of agriculture, when the need to attract kami to ensure good harvests made temporary structures necessary.

  Ōmiwa Shrine in Nara still preserves the logic of that earliest form. It contains no honden at all, because the shrine is believed to serve the mountain on which it stands and images or objects are therefore unnecessary. Archeology confirms that during the Yayoi period, mountain peaks that supplied stream water to the plains below were among the most common shintai in the earliest shrines.

  Mount Nantai, a phallus-shaped mountain in Nikko, illustrates the same principle. It constitutes the shintai of Futarasan Shrine, provides water to the rice paddies below, and takes its name from a word meaning 'man's body'. Similar phallic stone rods have been found in pre-agricultural Jōmon sites.

  The arrival of Buddhism in Japan in around the sixth century introduced the concept of a permanent shrine. Buddhist temples were built next to existing shrines in mixed complexes called jingū-ji, helping priesthood deal with local kami and making those formerly temporary structures permanent. Once shrines became permanent buildings, Shinto revealed a strong resistance to architectural change. This tendency produced the custom of rebuilding shrines faithfully at regular intervals, adhering strictly to their original design, a tradition whose clearest surviving example is Ise Grand Shrine, which is still rebuilt every 20 years.

• 4. The State Takes Control

  ›

  State integration of Shinto began in the 7th and 8th centuries. Under the reigns of Emperor Tenmu (672-686) and Empress Jitō (687-697), a legal code was written that was implemented in 701, marking the initial institutionalization of Shinto. Under the system this code established, one of the two major branches of the Japanese government was the Department of Divinity, responsible for defining the structure of shrines and rituals.

  Among the rites the system formalized was the Kinen-sai, performed on the fourth day of the second lunar month to pray for a good harvest. It was established in 675 and performed at the 3,132 shrines recorded in the official register. Largely based on a similar Chinese field-sowing rite, it was imperially administered nationally. In 798, shrines were formally categorized as either imperially administered or provincially endowed.

  In 905 CE, Emperor Daigo ordered a compilation of Shinto rites and rules. Previous attempts at codification had been made, but neither the Konin nor the Jogan Gishiki survived. The project began under Fujiwara no Tokihira, but stalled at his death in April 909. His brother Fujiwara no Tadahira took charge, and in 927 the compilation was promulgated in fifty volumes. That document listed all 2,861 Shinto shrines existing at the time, along with 3,131 officially recognized enshrined kami. In 1970, Felicia Gressitt Brock published a two-volume annotated English-language translation of its first ten volumes.

• 5. Buddhism, Separation, and Aftermath

  ›

  Until the Meiji period (1868-1912), what we now call a Shinto shrine was rarely encountered in its current form. With very few exceptions, shrines were simply part of temple-shrine complexes controlled by Buddhist clergy. Kami were thought at the time to be subjected to karma and therefore in need of the salvation only Buddhism could provide. The resulting jingū-ji complexes, having first appeared during the Nara period (710-794), remained common for over a millennium.

  The Meiji administration ended this by promulgating a new policy of separation between kami and Buddhist figures. The resulting anti-Buddhist movement triggered the forcible closure of thousands of Buddhist temples, the confiscation of their land, the forced return to lay life of monks, and the destruction of Buddhist books, statues, and other property. The defrocking of shrine monks who had performed Buddhist rites at Shinto shrines was ordered in April 1868. A few days later, the application of Buddhist terminology to kami and the veneration of Buddhist statues in shrines were both banned.

  The separation, however, has never been fully completed. To this day, almost all Buddhist temples in Japan have a small shrine dedicated to a Shinto tutelary kami, and Buddhist figures such as the goddess Kannon continue to be revered in Shinto shrines. The term gongen, which the Meiji government legally abolished because it applied Buddhist terminology to Shinto kami, survives in Eastern Japan at Hakusan shrines where the shrine itself is still called gongen.

• 6. Networks and the Reach of Kami

  ›

  Fushimi Inari Taisha in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, heads the largest shrine network in Japan, with more than 32,000 branch shrines, roughly a third of all shrines in the country. Inari, the tutelary kami of agriculture, also protects fishing, commerce, and productivity generally. Many modern Japanese corporations have shrines dedicated to Inari on their premises. The entrance to an Inari shrine is typically marked by one or more vermilion torii and two white foxes; those fox statues often hold a jewel and a key, or a sheaf of rice, a scroll, or a fox cub.

  The Hachiman network, second with 25,000 shrines, traces its expansion to a political moment. Because Emperor Ōjin was an ancestor of the Minamoto clan, Hachiman became the tutelary kami of the Minamoto samurai. After Minamoto no Yoritomo established the Kamakura shogunate, Hachiman became by extension the protector of the warrior class, and his worship spread throughout Japan among samurai and peasantry alike.

  The Tenjin network, with 10,500 shrines, enshrines the 9th-century scholar Sugawara no Michizane. He was originally enshrined not for worship but to placate his spirit; unjustly exiled in life, his rage was believed to be the cause of a plague and other disasters. Kitano Tenman-gū in Kyoto was the first shrine dedicated to him. Because he was a scholar, he became the kami of learning, and during the Edo period schools often opened a branch shrine in his honor. The top six shrine networks combined account for more than 90 percent of all shrines in Japan.

• 7. The Shape of a Shrine

  ›

  Ujigami Shrine in Uji holds the distinction of being the oldest shrine in Japan, and its honden follows the most common architectural style, the nagare-zukuri, whose defining feature is an asymmetrical gabled roof that projects outward above the main entrance to form a portico. The honden at Ujigami Shrine measures 5 by 3 ken externally, though internally it is composed of three sections each measuring 1 ken.

  Kasuga-zukuri, the second most common style, takes its name from Kasuga Taisha in Nara, established in 768 AD. The style is characterized by extreme smallness: just 1 by 1 ken, which at Kasuga Taisha itself translates to 1.9 by 2.6 meters. Supporting structures are painted vermilion, while the plank walls are white.

  The oldest styles, shinmei-zukuri, taisha-zukuri, and sumiyoshi-zukuri, are all believed to predate the arrival of Buddhism. Taisha-zukuri, named after Izumo Taisha, is considered the oldest of all. Its floor is raised on stilts, and scholars believe its origin lies in the raised-floor granaries found at sites like Toro in Shizuoka prefecture. The oldest extant example of taisha-zukuri is Kamosu Jinja's honden in Shimane Prefecture, built in the 16th century.

  Garden of the shrine grounds typically follows a fixed vocabulary: a torii gate marks the entrance, a sandō approach leads inward, a chōzuya fountain allows visitors to cleanse their hands and mouth, and komainu, the so-called lion dogs borrowed from Buddhism, stand guard. Only the haiden, the hall of worship, is open to the laity. San Marino Shrine in Serravalle, San Marino, built as the first official Shinto shrine in Europe supported by the Jinja Honcho, carries this same vocabulary to European soil.