Izumo Shrine – Kiyonori Kikutake
The city of Izumo (population 146,000) is in Shimane Prefecture, a still remote and under-populated area located on the north coast of Honshū, the main Japanese island, facing the Sea of Japan. The Chūgoku mountains to the south squeeze the Prefecture into a narrow coastal strip which runs from the capital, Matsue, to the north, down to Masuda in the south. When approached today by train, it is by a single-track line which runs through the mountains and the jungle. Yet here, despite or rather because of its remoteness, is the Izumo Grand Shrine.
Located where an important kami (or divinity) resides, Shintō shrines are often found, unlike Christian cathedrals in Europe, far from the centres of power such as Nara, Kyoto and Kamakura. The Izumo Grand Shrine is thought to be the oldest Shintō shrine in Japan although its extant buildings date from only the mid-eighteenth century. It predates the Ise Grand Shrine in Mei Prefecture, which is dedicated specifically to the Emperor, and enshrines the kami Ōkuninushi, the deity of marriage who, it is believed, created Japan even before it was populated by the Emperor’s ancestors. Its remoteness has led to it being overshadowed by other more recent and accessible Shintō shrines but the myth remains that in October all the Shintō gods meet there.
