Japan: Three Views of Time

1. Isé Shrine at the Forest of Jingu

This forest and the river running through it are considered are considered the holiest in Japan's native Shintoist religion. The bridge crossing it, and the many shrines and ancillary structures within the forest constitute the most revered site for Shintoists.

The main sanctuary building at Isé cannot be visited by pilgrims or others, or even photographed from the outside. These are some sneaky photos I really shouldn't have gotten away with - the first is the torii (sacred entry) leading to the gateway through the outer fence of the Goshóden (main sanctuary building). Here people stand, look over the fence at the main sanctuary building, and pray. I didn't realize, until a pilgrim stopped me, that I wasn't permitted to even take this photo - what I was actually trying to photograph wasn't the torii, but the tree to the left of the photo.

I thought it was interesting that, rather than cut down the tree, or locate the path slightly to the right, the tree is incorporated into the path. This harmonization of artificial with natural, manmade intervention as an extension of nature, is one of the defining characteristics of Isé.


This is a part of the main sanctuary building, as seen from the other side of the fence. This building, and the others within the sanctuary fence, are built in a style of architecture called yuiitsu shinmei zukuri, which is unique to Jingu. Derived from vernacular grain store architecture, it is considered the most purely 'japanese' building form in Japan, free from all external influences.


The is the alternate site of the main sanctuary. Every twenty years, each shrine within the holy forest is dismantled, with the building elements, artifacts and apparel redistributed to other sites around Japan. With timber from the surrounding forest, the shrines, torii, and ancillary structures are reconstructed on a site next to the old one over the course of two years. The entire ritual, known as the Shikinen Sengú, culminates with a ceremonial moving of the august mirror (symbol of the kami, or spirit of the shrine) to the new site. The small structure in the middle ground of this photo is small shrine to house the kami until the next iteration of the cycle, (the 62nd) in October 2013.

It is this notion of ritual which is key to understanding Isé. The functional origins of this tradition are rooted in a desire for permanence and continuity. Under threat from a foreign faith (Buddhism), the tenth Emperor and head of the religion, Suinin Tennó, instituted the shrines at Jingu and the cycle of reconstruction as a means of maintaining the current belief system. Through the regularity and repetition of a vast and complicated system of ceremonies to exact traditional specifications, a kind of stasis is maintained, leading to the purity required to maintain both a political and religious status quo.

This stasis requires that the entire phenomenon be rooted directly to a particular environment, that it be, literally, genus loci, spirit of place. A harmonization of artificial and natural is obtained physically through a homogeneity of material, and operationally through cyclic ritual.


Timber from the forest is used for every element of the building (structure, cladding, even roofing). Construction techniques become a celebration of wood, metal fixings are rejected in favour of a materially homogenous system of pegs maintain rigidity in the structure.


The regularity of ritual is used above all to root the tradition temporally in its context as the use of wood roots it physically. The cyclic character of the Shikinen Sengú makes it an extension of nature, aligns human activity with other natural cycles - daily, lunar, seasonal, generational, etc. The stasis implied by this repetition implies that a perfect, ideal, or natural condition has been attained, that merely needs to be maintained. A diagram for its temporal status might look like this: