Atmosphere
Shinto shrines
Entrance to a shrine ©
A shrine (jinja) is a sacred place where kami live, and which show the power and nature of the kami. It's conventional in Japan to refer to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples - but Shinto shrines actually are temples, despite not using that name. Every village and town or district in Japan will have its own Shinto shrine, dedicated to the local kami.
The Japanese see shrines as both restful places filled with a sense of the sacred, and as the source of their spiritual vitality - they regard them as their spiritual home, and often attend the same shrine regularly throughout their lives. Shrines need not be buildings - rocks, trees, and mountains can all act as shrines, if they are special to kami.
A large shrine can contain several smaller sub-shrines. Shinto shrines can cover several thousand acres, or a few square feet. They are often located in the landscape in such a way as to emphasise their connection to the natural world, and can include sacred groves of trees, and streams.
Various symbolic structures, such as torii gates and shimenawa ropes, are used to separate the shrine from the rest of the world. Some major shrines have a national rather than a local role, and are visited by millions of people from across Japan at major festivals.
Visiting a shrine is not the same as going to church, and Japanese people don't visit on a particular day each week (but unlike British churchgoers, many Japanese will dedicate part of their home to their faith, and maintain a tiny shrine there to local kami). People go to the shrine at festival times, and at other times when they feel like doing so. Japanese often visit the local shrine when they want the local kami to do them a favour such as good exam results, a good outcome to a surgical operation for a relative, and so on.
Torii (see next page) at Gosha Inari shrine, Aichi ©
The atmosphere of Shinto shrines
Many Shinto shrines are places of intense calm with beautiful gardens. They possess a deeply spiritual atmosphere, as Jean Herbert has written...
The best explanation I can offer is that the Shinto shrine is a visible and ever-active expression of the factual kinship - in the most literal sense of the word - which exists between individual man and the whole earth, celestial bodies and deities, whatever name they be given.
When entering it, one inevitably becomes more or less conscious of that blood-relation, and the realisation of it throws into the background all feelings of anxiety, antagonism, loneliness, discouragement, as when a child comes to rest on its mother's lap.
A feeling of almost palpable peace and security falls upon the visitor as he proceeds further into the holy enclosure, and to those unready for it, it comes as a shock. Epithets such as kogoshi (god-like) and kami-sabi (divinely serene) seem fully justified.
Jean Herbert, Shinto, At the Fountain-Head of Japan, 1967