This month's World Heritage Site...

Itsukushima Shrine

An Ancient Shrine Links
With Hiroshima as a Potent Symbol

By Patrick Totty

The southwestern region of Japan’s largest island, Honshu, is home to two of the most powerful cultural symbols in Japanese history. 

There is Hiroshima, fated to be the first city ever destroyed by a nuclear weapon, and symbolized worldwide by the haunting image of the dome on the building at ground zero whose girders were stripped clean by atomic fire. 

And there is neighboring Miyajima Island in Hiroshima Bay, the sacred setting for an old shrine so beautiful that the image of its ceremonial gate is what first comes to mind in hundreds of millions of people when they think about Japan.

That gate, the Otorii (Grand Gate), stands at the seaward entrance to Itsukushima Shrine, a 1,400-year-old Shinto holy place built on water in a small inlet at the foot of Miyajima’s heavily forested mountain slopes. The shrine is so sacred that Miyajima itself cannot ever be cultivated or used for birth or burials.

The traditional four-legged gate, whose foundation reaches down into tidal mud, is built of camphor wood and painted a striking vermilion color. Because of constant atmospheric moisture, tidal ebbs and flows, and assaults by corrosive seawater, the Otorii has been rebuilt several times over the past 1,000 years, each time painstakingly to the structure’s exact original specifications.

The gate leads to a complex that includes a great sanctuary and three stages for the performance of sacred music, dances and Noh dramas. In all, the shrine, including several onshore buildings, consists of 56 structures, all in the Shinden style of architecture that was popular during Japan’s Heian Period (794-1192 A.D.). This era was considered the highpoint of Japanese culture and arts before the Tokugawa Shogunate Period (1600-1867 A.D.)

As with the Otorii, the shrine’s buildings must be constantly tended to guard against weathering and corrosion. One beneficial result of this constant maintenance is that the laborers who do it are constantly reacquainted with ancient building techniques. In this way, they function as a sort of cultural memory.

Given Itsukushima Shrine’s physical beauty, its exacting preservation of ancient architectural styles and methods, and its cultural importance to the Japanese, it’s no wonder that UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1996.

One of the best web sites for learning more about Itsukushima is located at http://www.hiroshima-cdas.or.jp/miyajima/english/jinja/noshock.htm  For other sites, use a comprehensive search engine like Google or Dogpile and type in “Itsukushima Shrine” or “Itsukushima Shinto Shrine.”