Rebuilt every 20 years around a mirror nobody may see
Shinto’s holiest place, the shrine of the sun goddess Amaterasu at Ise, is said to hold the sacred mirror Yata no Kagami, and almost nobody sees any of it. Visitors may walk the forest and its paths, but not beyond sight of the thatched roofs of the inner buildings, hidden behind four tall wooden fences, and the chief priest or priestess must come from the imperial family. The buildings hold the other mystery. Every 20 years the main shrines and the Uji Bridge are taken down and rebuilt on the neighbouring plot to the same exacting design, in solid cypress with no nails, so that they are forever new and forever ancient. The buildings standing today, from 2013, are the 62nd, and the next are due in 2033. Nobody knows what the rebuilding, the Shikinen Sengū, was originally for. The 2013 rebuild was paid for with private donations of 57 billion yen, and in the Edo period an estimated one Japanese person in ten made the pilgrimage here.
Ise, Mie Prefecture, Japan
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
