Itsukushima- Japanese LocationLocation · Landmark"Island Where Gods Dwell"

The Island

Itsukushima rises from the western Inland Sea off the coast of Aki Province. The entire island was holy ground. In traditional practice, no one could be born there and no one could die there. Burial on the island was forbidden. The dying were carried to the mainland. Women about to give birth were taken across the water.

Shrine tradition holds that in 593, a local lord named Saeki no Kuramoto received a divine revelation instructing him to build a sanctuary on the island's northeastern shore for the three Munakata goddesses. The chief among them, Ichikishimahime, became the island's primary deity. The shrine he built stands on wooden piers driven into the tidal flats. At high tide, the buildings float on the water. At low tide, the pilings stand exposed and the sea withdraws, leaving wet sand stretching out to the great torii gate.

Kiyomori's Shrine

In the twelfth century, Taira no Kiyomori adopted the Itsukushima deity as the guardian goddess of the Taira clan. The Heike Monogatari records his devotion: he credited the goddess with his clan's rise to power and rebuilt the shrine in the palatial shinden-zukuri style. He commissioned the Heike Nōkyō, thirty-three scrolls of the Lotus Sutra decorated with gold and silver, and offered them to the shrine.

The great torii gate, the ōtorii, stands sixteen meters tall in the sea before the shrine. Vermilion-painted, it marks the boundary between the profane waters and the sacred island. At high tide it appears to float. At low tide visitors walk out to its base across the exposed seabed, and the gate towers above them, salt-stained at the waterline.