Izumo Taisha: The Shrine at the Gateway of San'in

The kuniyuzuri (国譲り), the "ceding of the land" recorded in Japanese mythology, is a story about Izumo Taisha, the grand shrine in the city of Izumo, Shimane Prefecture. It is also the memory of something that happened in ancient Japan. The founding dates of most Japanese shrines are unknown, and the oldest trace their origins to the "age of the gods," so myth is the only ground they have. Izumo Taisha is one of these ancient shrines. Its founding rests on myth, and to this day its chief priest comes from a clan that myth itself names. That is extraordinarily rare.

The sanctuary was founded on an elevated coastal promontory, and the lowlands rolling away beneath it were once open lagoon waters. Geological boring data confirms that alone among the surrounding terrain, the spur where Izumo Taisha stands has remained high ground since the Jomon period. The topography indicates that the shrine stood as the oceanic portal to the inland San'in — a formidable natural stronghold commanding all access between lagoon and open sea.

For centuries, a persistent oral tradition preserved by the hereditary priesthood of Izumo Taisha maintained that the ancient sanctuary was once vastly taller than the present structure, rising to an extraordinary height of forty-eight meters. Even today, the main hall of Izumo Taisha stands at twenty-four meters, the tallest wooden shrine architecture in Japan; the ancient edifice would have been exactly twice that height. Because the shrine had already shrunk to its modern proportions by the Edo period, historians long dismissed the forty-eight-meter figure as an extravagant legendary exaggeration.

Then, in the year 2000, everything changed. During an excavation near the present main hall, archaeologists unearthed the titanic underground remnants of ancient wooden pillar sockets. The massive timber columns, bound together in bundles of three, corresponded precisely to the ancient architectural blueprints handed down through generations of the Senge family of chief priests, astonishing the archaeological world. Radiocarbon dating corroborated temple records indicating that the sanctuary was reconstructed in 1248, proving beyond doubt that a monumental high-rise wooden structure existed on the site in the thirteenth century.

Every autumn, beginning on the tenth day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar, Izumo Taisha observes the kamimukae-sai (神迎祭) — the ritual welcoming of the gods, considered among the oldest Shinto ceremonies in Japan. During this sacred week, the eight million deities from every province across the Japanese archipelago are believed to arrive in Izumo by sea. As dusk falls, Shinto priests gather on the sands of Inasa no Hama, a beach to the west of the shrine, kindle ritual fires against the darkening waves, welcome the arriving gods, and escort them to Izumo Taisha, where they are hosted in celebration for seven days.

Throughout the rest of Japan, this lunar month is still known as kannazuki (神無月) — the month without gods — because the local deities are said to have departed their native shrines for Izumo. In Izumo alone, by contrast, the month is called kamiarizuki (神在月) — the month where the gods are present. In these ancient turns of phrase, the distant memory of historical fact still echoes across time.

The kamimukaesai begins at seven in the evening on the dark beach of Inasa, in an ancient world lit only by the bonfires the priests of Izumo Taisha have lit. … In that dreamlike world the gods "come from the sea." They do not "descend from heaven." They "descend from the sea." That Inasa no Hama is where they land carries a memory from a very ancient time.

We call the principal deity of the great shrine in Izumo by the name Okuninushi. Yet this god has no true name.

The name Okuninushi never appears, not even once. From beginning to end the god is called Ame-no-shita-tsukurashishi Okami, the Great God Who Made All Under Heaven, or Onamochi, and neither the famous White Hare of Inaba nor his trials in the Land of Roots is told at all.

Which, then, is the true name? It is the question itself that is mistaken.

Formally pronounced Izumo Oyashiro, the shrine was known until the Edo period as Kizuki Taisha. The god enshrined within is Okuninushi.