Miyajima, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan
嚴島神社 · ee-tsoo-koo-SHEE-mah JIN-ja
A shrine built on stilts over the sea, with its gate standing in the water 200 metres out. Twice a day the tide comes in under the floors and the whole shrine seems to float. Twice a day it goes out, and you can walk to the gate.
Photo: Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The island was holy before the shrine was. People believed the whole island was the body of a god, so no one could live on it, cut its trees or be buried in it. To worship, they came by boat. The shrine was therefore built at the island's edge, on the beach between high and low water, where it touches the island as lightly as possible.
What you see was laid out about 1168 by Taira no Kiyomori, then the most powerful man in Japan. He built it like a nobleman's mansion of his day, with halls joined by covered walks round a garden. Here the garden is the sea. That was in the time of the Southern Song (1127–1279) in China.
Close by, with a page of its own: Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
The gate and the shore are free. One ticket lets you walk the corridors of the shrine from east to west, past all its halls and stages. The treasure hall, the hall on the hill and the cable car up the mountain are paid for separately.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The great gate | Free; on foot at low tide |
| The corridors | Shrine ticket |
| The shrine of the guest gods | Shrine ticket |
| The main shrine, the deck and the dance stage | Shrine ticket |
| The Noh stage, the arched bridge and the mirror ponds | Shrine ticket; seen from the corridor |
| The treasure hall | Separate; cheaper with the shrine on a joint ticket |
| The five-storey pagoda and Senjokaku | The pagoda is seen from outside, free; the hall has a small fee |
The red gate is 16.6 metres high and weighs about 60 tonnes. Nothing holds it down. Its posts are not sunk in the sea bed. They stand on it. The gate stays up by its own weight, and the box under its roof is filled with several tonnes of stones to make it heavier.
The two main posts are whole trunks of camphor trees, about five hundred years old when they were cut. This gate was put up in 1875. There have been gates on this spot for at least eight hundred years.
Now look at the water. If it is high, the shrine and the gate stand in the sea. If it is low, there is wet sand, and people are walking out to touch the posts. Both are the real thing. The builders meant you to see both.
The paint is vermilion. It was made from mercury and keeps insects and rot out of the wood. The colour was also believed to keep evil away.
"The gate floats", or "the gate is set in concrete". Neither. It stands on the sea bed by its weight alone.
"Miyajima is the name of the shrine." Miyajima means "shrine island" and is the everyday name of the island. Its proper name, and the shrine's, is Itsukushima.
"The gate is always in the water." For some hours each day it stands on sand. Check the tide table before you choose your boat.
"These are the buildings Kiyomori built." His shrine burned twice. Most of what stands dates from a rebuilding of 1241, on his plan. The innermost hall is from 1571.
"The deer are tame." They are wild. They will eat your map, your ticket and your ferry pass. Feeding them is forbidden.
The first stop is outside and free. Stops 2 to 6 follow the one-way route through the shrine. The last two are on the hill behind.
At low tide, walk out to it. Up close you see that it has six legs, not two. Each main post has two smaller posts beside it, joined by tie beams. This is what keeps it upright in a typhoon.
The posts are rough because they are natural trunks, not shaped timber. Look for coins pushed into the cracks by visitors. Please do not add one. The metal harms the wood.
On the roof, at the east end, is a gold sun, and at the west end a moon. The board on the seaward side reads "Itsukushima Shrine". The board facing the shrine gives the name in an older spelling.
The gate was wrapped in scaffolding for repair from 2019 to the end of 2022. Workers found the insides of the posts eaten hollow, and filled and bound them.
Pay at the east entrance and you are on the corridor. It runs for about 275 metres, in two wings, with a red post every 2.4 metres.
Look down. The floorboards are laid with a small gap between them. In a storm tide the sea rises through the gaps and runs off again. A tight floor would be lifted by the water like the lid of a box.
The boards you are walking on are a second layer, laid to protect the old floor beneath. Until the last century visitors took off their shoes.
The shrine is built to lose its edges. In the great typhoons of 1991 and 2004 the outer platforms and stages were torn away, as they are meant to be, and the main halls stood.
The first group of halls belongs to five gods who are guests of the island. Every ceremony of the shrine begins here, before going on to the main hall.
Look at the roofs. They are not tile. They are thin strips of cypress bark, laid in dozens of layers and fixed with bamboo nails. A roof lasts about thirty years.
The main halls face the gate across the water. Three goddesses are worshipped here, daughters of the storm god. They protect ships, and by extension all journeys and all good fortune.
In front is a wide wooden deck. In its middle stands a small raised stage with a red rail. Court dances called bugaku are performed on it, in masks and heavy silk, to flutes and drums. Kiyomori brought the dancers from Osaka in the 1100s. The same dances are still done here about ten times a year.
The deck rests on stone posts given by Mori Motonari. From it a narrow pier runs straight out towards the gate. Stand at its end. The gate, the pier and the innermost hall are on one line.
This is the frame most people take home. The leaders of the G7 were photographed on this spot in 2023. Stand at the landward end of the pier, with the bronze lantern to one side and the gate in the middle.
On the west side, apart from the corridor, is a roofed stage with a painted pine tree on its back wall. It is for Noh, the masked drama of the samurai, and was built in 1680. It is the only Noh stage in Japan that stands in the sea.
Noh actors stamp, and the sound matters. On land, large jars are set under the floor to make it ring. Here the floor is one sprung piece, and the water beneath changes the sound with the tide.
Near the exit is a steep red bridge with no steps. It was built in 1557 for the emperor's messenger alone. On the days he came, temporary steps were set on it.
At low tide, look on the sand beside the corridors for three round pools that do not drain. Fresh water rises in them from under the beach. They are called the mirror ponds.
The small unpainted hall nearby, of bare grey wood, was added in 1556. It shows what the red halls would look like without their paint.
On the hill just above the shrine stands a five-storey pagoda of 1407, and beside it a huge dark hall.
Hideyoshi ordered the hall in 1587 for the reading of Buddhist scriptures for the war dead. He died in 1598 with the roof on and nothing else done. It has no ceiling, no walls and no paint. It is called Senjokaku, "the hall of a thousand mats", for its size. You can walk in and see how a great timber building is put together.
In 2026 the pagoda is wrapped for repair until late December.
In 1164 Kiyomori and thirty-one members of his family each copied a chapter of Buddhist scripture and gave the set to the shrine. The scrolls are written on paper scattered with gold and silver, with crystal rollers, and are among the most beautiful books ever made in Japan. Copies are shown in the treasure hall near the exit.
The Tale of the Heike, the great war story of medieval Japan, tells how Kiyomori's clan rose and fell. Japanese schoolchildren learn its opening by heart. It says that the proud do not last, and are like a dream on a spring night.
The national television drama of 2012, Taira no Kiyomori, with Matsuyama Kenichi in the title part, filmed its pilgrimage scenes at the shrine.
Hiroshige and other print artists of the 1800s drew the gate again and again. Their pictures, sold cheaply all over Japan, are why every Japanese knew this view before the railway came.
The wooden rice scoops sold in every shop are the island's own invention. A monk here designed the shape about 1800, as something the islanders could make and sell to pilgrims.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 593 | The year tradition gives for the first shrine | Muhammad is a young merchant in Mecca |
| 1168 | Kiyomori builds the shrine over the sea | Notre-Dame in Paris has been building for five years |
| 1185 | Kiyomori's clan is destroyed at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura | Saladin takes Jerusalem two years later |
| 1241 | The halls are rebuilt after two fires | Mongol armies ride into Poland and Hungary |
| 1555 | The battle of Itsukushima | Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany make peace at Augsburg |
| 1587 | Hideyoshi orders the hall on the hill | Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded |
| 1875 | The present gate is raised | Bizet's opera Carmen is first performed |
| 1945 | The atomic bomb falls on Hiroshima, 20 kilometres away; the shrine is not harmed | The Second World War ends |
| 1996 | The shrine and Hiroshima's bombed dome join the World Heritage list together | The first cloned sheep, Dolly, is born |
One line to remember: come twice, once with the sea in and once with the sea out.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
The three goddesses came by sea looking for a home. A man of the island named Saeki no Kuramoto guided them round the shore in his boat until they chose this bay, in the year 593. A crow flew ahead to show the way.
Source: The shrine's own account, in records of the 1100s and later
While Kiyomori was repairing a temple on Mount Koya, an old monk appeared and told him that if he rebuilt the shrine of Itsukushima he would rise to the highest rank. The monk then vanished. He was the saint Kukai.
Source: The Tale of the Heike
Kiyomori wanted a channel cut finished before nightfall. He stood on the shore, raised his fan and called the sinking sun back up the sky. It rose, and the work was done.
Source: Local tradition of the Inland Sea, attached to the Ondo strait near Kure
The saint Kukai lit a fire on Mount Misen in 806 and it has burned ever since. Water boiled over it cures all illness. The flame in the Peace Park in Hiroshima was lit from it.
Source: Tradition of Daisho-in temple; the lighting of the Peace Flame from it in 1964 is a fact
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The shrine's published fees and hours and the Miyajima tourist association, as reported by guides checked in 2026.
Checked 2026-11-12
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