HISTORY of ITSUKUSHIMA SHRINE 

Itsukushima shrine is located in Itsukushima（Miyajima) in hiroshima Japan.

This is one of UNESCO’s world heritage site since 1996.

Island name “Miyajima” literary means shrine island.

What is “Itsukushima” means？

Itsukushima was originally called “Itsuki shima”.

Itsuki means “Purify oneself and serve God” and Itsukushima means the island that enshrine God.

The pronunciation “ITSUKI ” turn into “ITSUKU ” as time passes and called “ITSUKU SHIMA” now.

When does this shrine build？

Itsuikushima island(Miyajima) is worshiped as God’s island since 6th century and current form was from 12th century(1168).

Why is this shrine built on the sea？

The whole island of itsukushima has been worshiped as “Island of God”, and people did not want to harm island by cut trees and digging hole as desecrate.

Then people built on the shore of island, not on the island ground by settle cornerstone and place the shrine with post. The great Torii gate is placed on the shore with same reason.

You can see if the sea tide is low, all pillars are not fixed to the shore, just placed on a fundamental stone. If the pillar is fixed, the shrine building might collapse easily to bear the brunt of wave and wind power. To this design treatment gives more resirience to the shrine.

As a Holy Island

Miyajima island has been venerated as ”God Island ”, so it is controlled under severe restriction of bury, funeral and give birth.

There are no graveyards on the island until now.

What made this shrine unique style？

Itsukushima shrine is build with “Shinden-zukuri” method that is originally adapt for Japanese ariscocratic mansions, but this combination make the shrine very unique and one of the reason to be resistered as UNESCO’s world heritage site in 1996.

wall less boardwalk  connects each building                (See method below)

Shinden-Zukuri method are consits of

• Main building settle in the center of the house.
• Each buildings are connected by boardwalks.
• No walls between boardwalk and buildings. 
• Subsidial buildings are placed synmetory
• Place pond on south (Simulated Seto inland Sea at North in this case )

To prevent the mail hall from soaking up.

Main hall has been kept not soaked for more than 850 years, even other parts of the shrine have been soaked by typhoons or high tide.

There are lot of elevation design to save the main hall from soaking up and the main hall is settled in the highest part.

Taira no Kiyomori, a designer researched in detail before buid shrine such as land shape, water flow and tide condition.

Each plank floor of the boardwalk has space which is designed for reducing water pressure.

Shrine is not fixed because it was designed to float on the water, aiming actually to reduce wave or wind power and stress by floating itself.

The boardwalk floor plate has placed with space each other to alleaviate water pressure in case of Natural disaster.

This is one of number eight related trivia in Itsukushima shrine. (See picture above)

• There are 108 pillars at the boardwalk.
• Each pillar has 8 floor plates between it.
• 108 lanterns hanging at the boardwalk.
• Total length of boardwalk is 108-ken(old length unit, approx 1.8m≒6ft)