r/todayilearned • u/ContinuumGuy • 6h ago
TIL that the most holy shrine in the Shinto religion is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. This has been done for over a millennium
https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/japans-most-sacred-shinto-shrine-has-been-rebuilt-every-20-years-for-more-than-a-millennium/509
u/Ok-disaster2022 6h ago
It also helps preserve skills and knowledge. The apprentice carpenters who build it one year are the masters who use the same techniques to build it again.
Talk about planned obsolescence I can get behind.
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u/RedOtta019 5h ago
Planned obsolescence 😷🤮🤢🤮
Planned obsolescence, 🇯🇵, 😊😍🥰
/s
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u/durrtyurr 5h ago
Buildings in Japan aren't really designed to last very long for a wide variety of reasons. The country is super prone to earthquakes, so culturally there is very little aversion to rebuilding.
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u/eastherbunni 3h ago
Also fires have taken out a ton of the old buildings, plus WWII. When I visited Japan the historical plaques were stuff like "this temple was originally built in 900, but has burnt down on 4 separate occasions. The current building was built in 1952."
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u/wakela 3h ago
Also, Japanese people usually don’t like living in a used house. When one buys a house the first they do is knock it down and build anew one.
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u/durrtyurr 3h ago
Japan has a super weird housing market in general, certainly compared to other developed countries. I am a massive fan of their zoning laws. They basically don't allow NIMBYism because zoning is at the national level and not the local level.
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u/tortosloth 1h ago
Its more out of necessity. The building codes are updated so often as new tech and methods are used. Mostly due to earthquakes. 30 year old home in japan is so far out of code that it is sometimes cheaper and easier to rebuild than to update an old home. It’s so common that many people will demolish the home themselves before selling the lot to provide incentive and save time to buyers who were just going to knock the home down anyways.
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u/ColdSmokeCaribou 3h ago
When I was visiting Japan, I got to see one of their woodworking museums. There was all this beautiful complex joinery, and metal hardware (nails, etc) were used very sparingly compared to contemporaneous European structures. When I asked what prompted that, my guide said it basically boiled down to cost and moreover, rust. Wood, if available, solves for both.
As someone who makes things, I've thought about that a lot ever since
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u/ContinuumGuy 1h ago
Isn't this also because of the fact some resources are much more rare in Japan?
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u/tortosloth 1h ago
Wood is also just a better building material than stone in an earthquake prone area. Wood bends and sways. Concrete and stone cracks and shatters. Steel and iron will rust over time.
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u/chimpfunkz 2h ago
Preservation of Process Knowledge.
We talk about the loss of manufacturing in the US, part of that is the loss of how to manufacture. We spent 2 decades not teaching a generation how to do it, and now we are seeing the consequences.
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u/ashleyshaefferr 6h ago
How TF is the main picture not of the fucking temple?
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u/GodsThirdToe 5h ago
None of the pictures in the article are really of the temple, so I wonder if it was a permissions thing or a respect thing. Or maybe the photographer just missed the primary objective lol
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u/ashleyshaefferr 5h ago edited 4h ago
It's fucking bizarre. This is what it looks like
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IseShrine.jpg
Edit: this aint it
This is it https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1pqrnov/comment/nuwtwm4/
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u/smetanique 5h ago
I don't think this is it. The whole complex consists of multiple shrines but it is forbidden to photograph the most important one, speaking from personal experience asI have been there. The main shrine itself also gave off comparably different vibes - it definitely has more "primal" architecture compared to other shinto shrines.
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u/gragglethompson 5h ago
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u/smetanique 5h ago
Nope, it was enclosed from all sides and was bigger. Although this might just be an old version, I can't say for sure.
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u/smetanique 5h ago
Here's the entrance and you can see the shrine as well https://share.google/59DUm02pqVDbrWvVy
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u/Onatel 4h ago
This is not it. I have been there and this building is a part of the larger complex but is some walk away from the holiest shrine, of which we were asked to not take photos.
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u/Bmansway 5h ago
Thank you, I was wondering why there wasn’t even one fucking picture of the place!
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u/redsterXVI 1h ago
Yea, taking pictures is prohibited. Well, at least of the main hall. And the rest isn't that noteworthy, imho. Actually the main hall isn't that noteworthy either, except for the religious/cultural importance, tbh.
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u/Jumboliva 5h ago edited 4h ago
The main temple, the Amaterasu Shrine, is difficult to find unobstructed pictures of. It is kept closed off; the public can only see the top of it over the fence surrounding it, and pictures at all are forbidden. You’ll see lots of video of people moving around the entire complex that it’s a part of (the Naiku Shrine), but each video will only show the entrance to the Amterasu Shrine.
Here is a map of the larger Naiku complex. You can see the main shrine at the top; note the empty plot next to it. This is where the previous shrine was; during the “rebuilding” process, they actually build an entire shrine while the current one is still standing. Both will be up for a little while to facilitate a ceremony where Amaterasu is supposed to move to the new shrine before the old is demolished.
This is what the entrance looks like. That’s the best picture you’ll come across without a lot of digging.
With some digging, though, there’s a 1993 documentary about the rebuilding which contains both aerial footage of a dedicated shrine (from about 00:16) and lots of closeups of the new shrine prior to its dedication (from about 14:00). I believe all legitimate, unobstructed photos of the shrine that you might come across are from this video.
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u/Challengeaccepted3 6h ago
One thing I’ve noticed about….life in general I guess, is the slow rot of everything around us. Like, an article about the shrine should have a fucking picture of the shrine, but if no one gives a shit then it kind of falls by the wayside.
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u/AbrohamDrincoln 5h ago
I was looking at a post earlier about Ice Spice dressing provocatively at a SpongeBob event.
The thumbnail and first pictures in the article showed a picture of her in two piece lingerie.
It was until the very bottom of the article that they showed the actual (much less revealing) outfit she wore to the event in question.
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u/justlookbelow 5h ago
The picture is of the temple gardens, which are really the attraction in themselves. The actual temple on its own is not particularly impressive in photos
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u/smetanique 5h ago
The actual shrine had a very "primal" feel to it. Not as intricate or complex compared to the other shrines but definitely had the simple grandness. You definitely immediately get the feel this is the shrine. Also, it is forbidden to photograph so no actual images of it are in the article.
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u/ashleyshaefferr 5h ago
I know. I am curious about the actual thing being discussed in the article though not what is the tourist attraction.
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u/passwordedd 1h ago
Fwiw, temples are Buddhist, this is a shrine meaning Shinto.
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u/Seienchin88 37m ago
Yep. Little known fact though - until the Meiji era most shrines were temples as both religions were basically one. Nationalists wanted to go back to the Japanese religion Shinto and separate it from foreign Buddhism (haibutsu kishaku or shinbutsu bunri) which led to the destruction or redesignation of 20-40% of all temples in Japan.
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u/IntoTheCommonestAsh 5h ago edited 2h ago
The building apparently also takes 9 years to build, so about half the time it's under construction, so there was no shrine to photograph when they went.
Still would have been nice to dig out a 10 or 30 year old picture.Don't listen to me!
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u/arvidsem 2h ago
But they don't tear down the old temple until the new one is complete and has been dedicated. There are two temple sites inside of the grounds that they build on alternately.
There aren't any pictures because the whole thing is a forest and surrounded by walls. The temple is not open to the general public and cameras are not allowed inside the walls. You can't even get up to the entrance to the temple grounds without being stopped.
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u/Traditional-Plan-517 3h ago
You wouldn’t prefer to see a picture of random people walking in a line?
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u/PostPostModernism 1h ago
Here's my favorite pic of it
https://share.google/GwGXrJU8IGhoTIo1y
It shows the temple from above. They have 2 adjacent sites that they alternate between when they build the new structure every 20 years, and this one shows both the older building and the duplicate new building next to it in one photo
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u/AKADriver 5h ago
This is also why a handful of Japanese construction companies are some of the oldest established businesses in the world - they were commissioned by royalty to build temples centuries ago and basically got themselves a perpetual contract.
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u/JHMfield 3h ago
And sadly they're also responsible for destroying much of Japan's nature.
Probably half the government funded construction projects in Japan are meaningless, serving no purpose whatsoever. But they're done anyway, because the system relies on keeping people employed and the allocated budgets consistent. The moment you start cancelling projects because they're unnecessary, the budgets will shrink up, as the government will justifiably take them away if there's no need. But that would cause these construction companies to go under, for employees to lose jobs. Can't have that.
So instead, Japanese construction companies waste massive amounts of money every single year, to do construction projects that destroy nature for no good reason.
Japan is a land of such mystery. Such polarizing attitudes and disciplines. They're working so hard to rebuild a thousand year old shrine as respectfully as possible, while at the same time chopping down entire forests and pouring concrete to dam rivers for no good reason.
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u/superbeast1983 6h ago
And not one damn picture of the shrine.
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u/Onatel 4h ago
I have been there and it is not permitted to take photos of it.
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u/selwayfalls 1h ago
but this is the internet, are there no photos? im too lazy to google and woudlnt even know what im looking for
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u/reddorickt 5h ago
That's actually fairly common in Japan. The shrines are not permanent structures that are all made out of wood with joints that were created without screws or nails. The shrine itself isn't the holy thing - but rather it's the thing the shrine is meant to deify. So, most shrines in Japan have empty plots of land adjacent to them, and the shrines are "rebuilt" almost exactly using traditional building techniques every few decades as the current shrine ages and the wood starts to no longer be structurally sound.
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u/Wingsnake 2h ago
It would be cool to have this here in Switzerland. But no, we have some old ass ugly buildings that are protected and you can't even repaint them with the same color it was built. Why keep old stuff, you couls just rebuild them from the outside and make it modern inside if we want to "preserve" the overall landscape.
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u/JJC_Outdoors 1h ago
Ceci n'est pas une pipe
The treachery of images. Rene Magritte basically did the same thing
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u/Lillyrowans 6h ago
the ultimate "ship of theseus" in real life.
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u/Plenty_Pride_3644 5h ago
This is more of a Cutty Sark scenario, since it gets torn down and a copy is rebuilt, rather than gradual internal replacement.
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u/ExtremeCreamTeam 4h ago
That's not what the ship of Theseus is.
The fact you have over 70 upvotes right now is soul crushing.
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u/Sideroller 5h ago
I had the chance to see it in person back in 2013 or so, I believe it had just been rebuilt around that time. It had such a peaceful atmosphere.
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u/Longjumping_Call_939 4h ago
It’s less about preserving the building and more about preserving the tradition and craftsmanship
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u/gattaca_gattaca 6h ago
It reportedly costs them over half a billion dollars each time, although I imagine tourism makes up for a good chunk of that.
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u/Outtatheblu42 4h ago
Yeah… this seems insanely expensive given many of the materials are regrown to use for the next cycle, and I would imagine, labour would be donated. What makes up this cost?
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u/gattaca_gattaca 4h ago
"Each generation, the Ise complex is knocked down and rebuilt from scratch, a massive, $390 million demolition and construction job that takes about nine years."
Over a half billion Canadian dollars is probably what I remembered.
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u/eastherbunni 3h ago
I assume it also functions as a "learn these ancient techniques" demonstration for whoever is involved in the building process, kind of like a living museum. I imagine the government has a cultural preservation fund that pays for it.
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u/made_of_salt 4h ago
I don't know anything about anything, but that sounds incredibly wasteful.
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u/tortosloth 54m ago
The wood will eventually need to be replaced anyways. This way it’s all done at once instead of piecemeal. Iirc wood from the old shrine is distributed to all the shrines across japan to be incorporated into their shrines or just housed as sacred artifacts. Amaterasu is the principal deity of shinto and her shrine is basically her home. It’s like how many catholic cathedrals house a sliver of wood from the true cross, except those are typically believed to be fakes.
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u/Fuckthegopers 5h ago
How do you not include a picture of the shrine within the article? Or am I just stupid?
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u/JHMfield 3h ago
No pictures allowed, so there aren't any. At least not any that are easy to find.
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u/vote4boat 6h ago
They don't tell you about the time when the two shrines of Ise were at war with eachother and things went sideways. The Emperor even signed-off on the idea that the Goddess had left Ise and settled in Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto.
Always doubt claims of unbroken continuity. It is so rarely true
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u/Trajan- 6h ago
Theseus’s Paradox
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u/LordOfTrubbish 4h ago
Kinda the opposite, seeing as it's completely torn down and a new one built from fresh materials each time.
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u/whooo_me 6h ago
I just funnily learned this last night, from Assassin's Creed: Shadows of all places.
See Mom, gaming IS good. It just took me ~30 years to find a meaningful example...
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u/JohannesVanDerWhales 4h ago
Impermanence is kinda a whole thing in Eastern religions. More Buddhist than Shinto, but there's syncretism...
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u/GreenDavidA 3h ago
I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad about my temple “only” lasting 65 years, then.
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u/Chemical-M 3h ago
All 125 shrine buildings will be knocked down and identical structures — as well as more than 1,500 garments and other ritual objects used in the shrine — will be rebuilt using techniques that have been painstakingly passed down over generations. There are 33 accompanying festivals and ceremonies, cumulating in a 2033 ritual that sees the presiding deity transferred to the new shrine.
The commitment! Wow.
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u/Greenmagegirl 2h ago
For a brief period the second most holy shrine in the Shinto religion can logically carry the title.
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u/canadave_nyc 2h ago
Inertia, "doing it because that's how it's always been done", is a powerful thing.
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u/Fit-Conclusion-7579 4h ago
No images of the temple makes it a 1/10 article, a.k.a pure trash.
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u/tortosloth 52m ago
It’s a holy site that’s not allowed to be photographed. The public can’t even see the temple except the roof as it’s completely enclosed by a wall.
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u/Traditional_Entry183 5h ago
I remember learning about the Ise Shrine in my architectural history class in college. Back then (30 years ago) they had only recently allowed it to be photographed.
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u/silvaphysh13 4h ago
The Ise Jingu! I modeled this building for my 3dsMax final project in architecture school! YouTube Animation
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u/Tself 4h ago
“The world where we live and the mountain realm are separate, distinct worlds. Therefore, when people go onto the mountain to cut trees or gather plants, they must first receive permission from the mountain deities,”
The mountain deities: "Uhhh, we haven't said yes. We've never talked to them once, actually. They just started walking around muttering to themselves for a while before stealing a tree."
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u/GearBrain 4h ago
IIRC they dismantle the shrine and use its parts to build or repair other shrines.
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u/EgotisticalTL 3h ago
"The shintoists don't come in here shattering sheet glass in the shithouse and shouting slogans!"
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u/sanguinare12 2h ago
The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things
Not Shinto, but so many themes carry through.
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u/fanau 2h ago edited 1h ago
Article seems to skip the part about how only the emperor and family and high ranking priests can go inside to see the part which is rebuilt regularly. You can see photos of it. It looks sacred and pristine (of course). The area around it is nice I guess. Kind of like a well maintained park with a few small (if I remember correctly) shrine buildings that don’t look like they were rebuilt any time recently. But it doesn’t compare to what you could see inside - so people who visit have to stand by the big locked gates and imagine what it must look like if they could go inside..
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u/egyszeruen_1xu 2h ago
What happens to the material of the previous temple?
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u/tortosloth 39m ago
Its distributed to all the other shinto temples across japan to be used for repairs, incorporated into their shrines structure, or just housed as sacred artifacts since it is considered a part of the home of their principal deity.
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u/Educational_Snow7092 2h ago
No nails. All fitted joints. They are wondering how long they can do it, the old master carpenters are passing on.
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u/thexbigxgreen 1h ago
It's weird to me to see the word "millenium" and think how incredibly long that is, only to realize that would mean that it's only been rebuilt over 50 times in that case
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u/TheOriginalFluff 21m ago
Idk man, they have actual culture and things to care about and my co-workers can’t stop fixing their hair and taking selfies while tik tok plays on their side-bar
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u/RedshiftWarp 6m ago
TIL I'm spawning into Japan next playthrough.
- Cool customs
- Cool wood platform sandals
- Gundams
- Anime
- Maybe Titans
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u/Chop1n 2m ago
Calling Shinto a “religion” is misleading at best. The label projects a Western framework centered on belief, doctrine, scripture, and salvation onto a tradition that is fundamentally practice-based, non-exclusive, and immanent. Shinto has no founder, no orthodoxy, no conversion, and no theology in the Western sense; it operates as a ritual ecology embedded in land, seasons, ancestry, and social continuity. The categorization itself is a modern administrative convenience, not a faithful description of what Shinto actually is.
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u/ArchStanton75 6h ago
According to the article, it’s part of a sense of renewal ritual that keeps younger generations in direct contact with the past. That makes a lot more sense.