Japanese PantheonTemple
Ise Grand Shrine
The most sacred Shinto shrine, dedicated to Amaterasu the sun goddess, ritually rebuilt every 20 years.
About Ise Grand Shrine
Amaterasu's stored mirror
Ise Jingu houses Amaterasu in the Inner Shrine (Naiku) and Toyouke in the Outer. The Nihon Shoki tells how the sacred mirror was moved until it rested at Ise in the reign of Suinin. The twenty-year rebuilding (shikinen sengu) is a documented imperial cult practice, not a myth episode. The Kojiki is thinner on Ise as a place. The shrine is where the sun goddess's regalia lives in the islands.
On the map
Ise Grand Shrine among other places of the Japanese Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Nihon Shoki (Suinin / Ise foundation tradition)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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