The Eternal Cycle of Ise

Returning to Ise Grand Shrine Before and After the Shikinen Sengu

A Place I Barely Remember

*A quiet path through the sacred forest of Ise Jingu.*

Ise Grand Shrine is a place familiar to almost everyone in Japan.

I first visited it when I was in elementary school. At the time, all I remember is a vast, quiet place that felt almost like a park.

What I remember more clearly is the lively approach after leaving the shrine grounds.
Souvenir shops and local food stalls lined the streets, creating a cheerful world completely different from the silence of the sacred forest.

Why, then, do I remember so little of the shrine itself?

Perhaps it was because the buildings, without vivid colors or elaborate forms, seemed to disappear into the landscape.

Maybe it is like returning home after playing in a forest as a child.
You remember being there.
But somehow, you cannot remember the shape of the forest itself.

A Shrine Without Color

Ise Grand Shrine is a place almost without color.

There are no brilliant vermilion torii gates, no elaborate carvings or decorations. Everything feels like part of nature.
The shrine buildings stand quietly among the trees, almost as if they were trying not to be noticed.

Here, the shrine is part of the forest.

What once seemed ordinary to me as a child began to feel very different when I returned decades later.

The beauty of adding nothing unnecessary.
The quiet dignity of simplicity.

Perhaps I was too young to understand it then.
Now, I find it deeply precious.

The pillars of the shrine buildings are set directly into the earth. Without artificial preservation meant to keep them unchanged forever, the buildings begin, from the moment they are completed, a slow journey back toward the forest.

And for a brief moment, we too become part of it.

The Colors of Time

Ise Grand Shrine may have little color of its own.
But the colors of the seasons are everywhere.

In spring, the translucent green of new leaves fills the background.
By late summer, the forest has deepened into rich greens and blues, intensified by the strong contrast of sunlight and shadow.

*At Ise, the forest is not a backdrop. It is part of the shrine itself.*

And in winter, as the colors begin to fade, the unadorned shrine buildings seem to return to their own quiet tones.

At Ise, it is the changing forest that gives color to the shrine.
The buildings remain.
The seasons pass around them.

Signs I Had Not Noticed

*An empty space beside the shrine—one of the quiet signs of the renewal to come.*

Looking back through the photographs I had taken, I began to notice something strange.

Beside some of the shrine buildings was another open space, almost exactly the same size.

What was it?
A place for another building?

And yet, there seemed to be no sign that anything would be built there soon.
These mysterious, sacred empty spaces appeared throughout the shrine grounds.

When I photographed them in 2008, I did not yet understand what they meant.

Years later, the photographs would reveal their purpose.
They were not simply empty spaces.
They were places waiting for another time.

Toward the Shikinen Sengu

*December 2012. Ise was already moving toward the 62nd Shikinen Sengu.*

The Shikinen Sengu.

Every twenty years, the principal shrine buildings are rebuilt and renewed, continuing a tradition that has endured for more than a thousand years.

As the next Shikinen Sengu began to attract growing attention, I returned to Ise once again.

The existing shrine buildings had spent years slowly becoming part of the forest. Their wood had darkened, their roofs had weathered, and moss had settled into the landscape around them.

Visitors came to see them once more before they completed their twenty-year role.

With such a rare moment approaching, even the shrine grounds seemed somehow more alive than usual.

And for the sun goddess enshrined at Ise, the time for a new dawn was drawing near.

A New Dawn

The Shikinen Sengu is more than the rebuilding of architecture.

It is a tradition of renewal—a belief that the sacred can remain eternally vital by being renewed again and again.

For the people of Japan, it is a special moment.
And so I returned once more, this time to see the newly renewed Ise Grand Shrine.

The place was familiar.
Yet the scent and colors were completely different.

*December 2013, shortly after the 62nd Shikinen Sengu.*

Fresh, pale wood stood where weathered buildings had once blended into the forest.

A new twenty-year dawn had begun, and the visitors around me seemed more excited than usual.

*Fresh cypress wood marks the beginning of another twenty-year cycle.*

And just as the shrine had entered a new beginning, perhaps we too could begin again.

Grateful to be there at that moment, I made my way toward the shrine.

The Cycle Continues

Ise Grand Shrine had been renewed.
Yet the forest surrounding it remained.
Or perhaps it only seemed unchanged.
The forest, too, is always moving through time.

And from the moment the new shrine buildings are completed, they begin to change as well.
Sunlight, rain, wind and seasons will slowly alter the pale wood.

Quietly and gradually, the buildings will once again become part of the forest.

It may be the same place, but no moment is ever the same.
It always feels like the first time.
It is always new.

Beyond the Shrine

After offering my prayers, I leave the sacred forest behind.

Beyond it waits the lively approach to the shrine—the world of shops, food and people that I still remember from my childhood.

*Beyond the forest, the pilgrimage continues through the lively streets of Ise.*

For more than a thousand years, Ise Grand Shrine has passed through the seasons while repeating its cycle of renewal.

And I, too, have become part of that larger cycle.

I am grateful that I have been able to return to this sacred place again and again, and I look forward to the day when I may witness another Shikinen Sengu.

The pilgrimage to Ise has continued since the days of Edo.

And it continues within us today.