鳥居
Bird perch, by the traditional reading of its characters.
Tagged: Shinto
Technical Meaning
The gate that marks the approach to a Shinto shrine and the crossing from the ordinary world into sacred ground. Two posts and two lintels, most often vermilion, in styles named for their shrines and shapes, myojin, shinmei, and kasuga among them. The great torii of Itsukushima stands in the sea, and the thousand gates of Fushimi Inari climb a mountain in Kyoto.
More Classical Japanese Terms
Related Across the Site
Calendar Event
Sanja Matsuri
Tokyo's largest Shinto festival; Asakusa Shrine.
Devotion
Jinja Mairi; Visiting the Shrine
To visit a shrine is to call on the kami of the place: through the torii, up the gravel path, to the offering box, the bell, two bows, two claps, one bow.
Devotion
Misogi; Purification by Water
Standing under a waterfall, or in the sea or a river at dawn, the practitioner lets cold water carry away pollution: Shinto's most austere devotion.
Devotion
The Kamidana; Household Altar
High on a wall of the home sits a miniature shrine: each morning it receives fresh water, rice, salt, and a bowed head with two claps.
Language
Classical Japanese
The classical written language of Japan, in which the norito prayers and the early chronicles are composed.
Prayer or Creed
Norito
Formal ritual prayers in classical Japanese, recited by priests to the kami at shrine festivals and rites.
Technology
Nuclear power
The reactor judged apart from the bomb: prudence, waste, and descendants on one side of the ledger, decarbonization arithmetic on the other; and no magisterium with a binding word.
Tradition & Science
Shinto
A tradition without a creed for science to contradict: kami in the landscape, a shrine rebuilt on schedule for thirteen centuries as a living school of craft, and modern flashpoints in nuclear pollution and the definition of death.
