S P O T ／ SPOT-016

Hananoiwaya Shrine (The Flower Rock Shrine)

花の窟神社はなのいわやじんじゃ

There is no hall. There are no carved wooden columns, no gilded altar fittings, no roof. At Hananoiwaya, the shrine is a 45-meter cliff face of raw granite, and that is everything. This is considered one of the oldest places of worship in Japan — the Chronicles of Japan (Nihon Shoki) place its founding at the very dawn of the Japanese state — and its utter simplicity suggests something about what Shinto looked like before the religion adopted the architectural language of imported Buddhism. The cliff is said to be the burial place of Izanami, the goddess who died giving birth to the fire deity Kagatsuchi, whose tomb you can walk along, touching what mythology tells you is the resting place of the creator of Japan. Twice a year, in February and October, the Otsunanukake ceremony strings enormous ropes of braided cloth between the cliff face and a ceremonial platform, in a rite that has continued unchanged for at least two thousand years. The site was designated part of the Kumano Kodō UNESCO World Heritage route in 2004 — a recognition that felt, to regular visitors, like merely official confirmation of something they already knew.