Torii Gate

In Shinto a shrine (神社, jinja) is the dwelling of kami: the spirits, deities, and sacred presences of the natural world. The torii stands where the ordinary gives way to the holy; to pass through it is to enter the domain of the kami. By custom, visitors bow before crossing and keep to the sides of the path rather than walking down its centre, the seichū, which is left for the deity. The approach beyond the gate, the sandō (参道), leads toward the shrine, and along it you stop at a water pavilion to rinse your hands and mouth before drawing near. A large shrine may have several torii in sequence.

Most are painted vivid vermilion (朱色, shuiro), a red believed to ward off evil and to stand for life and the sun, and whose pigment, rich in mercury, also helped preserve the wood. Others are bare timber, stone, or bronze. The shape comes in two broad families: the shinmei style, with straight beams, and the myōjin style, whose top beam curves up at the ends. A simple rule of thumb for travellers: a torii means a Shinto shrine, while a roofed gate (the sanmon) means a Buddhist temple.

A few rise to extraordinary scale. The great gate of Itsukushima Shrine, off Hiroshima, appears to float on the sea at high tide. At Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, thousands of donated torii stand so close they form glowing tunnels winding up the mountain, each given by a worshipper or business in thanks or hope, the donor's name inked on the back. Meiji Jingū in Tokyo is entered through one of the largest wooden torii in the country, and the Hakone Shrine gate rises straight from the surface of Lake Ashi with Mount Fuji behind it.