Izumo Taisha

Izumo Taisha on the Sea of Japan coast is among the oldest shrines of Shintō, dedicated to Ōkuninushi, the god who builds the land and binds people in marriage. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki tell that Ōkuninushi yielded Izumo to the heavenly grandson Ninigi, whereupon Amaterasu ordered a palace built for him with colossal pillars, and that palace became this shrine.

Its hall gave its name to the taisha-zukuri style; a Heian record of about 950 describes it as roughly forty-eight metres high. The hall was shortened around 1200 and reconstructed in 1744 to twenty-four metres.

In the tenth lunar month the kami of Japan were believed to gather here to arrange marriages, births and deaths, so Izumo calls it the month with gods, while elsewhere it is the month without gods. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it became a pilgrimage destination.