A shrine rebuilt every twenty years
The most sacred site in SHINTO, the Grand Shrine at Ise, belongs to the sun goddess AMATERASU, and every twenty years it is rebuilt from scratch. Carpenters raise an identical new SHRINE of fresh cypress wood on the empty plot beside the old one, and the goddess is carried across in a ceremony at night. The 62nd rebuilding was finished in 2013; the next is due in 2033.
SHINTO is still practised across Japan, and it teaches that KAMI, sacred powers, are found in mountains, waterfalls, old trees and remarkable people. At Ise, what matters is a place kept pure and a craft kept alive, not an old building.
The first rule of the underworld: don't look
In the Kojiki, Japan's oldest surviving book, written in 712, the gods IZANAGI and IZANAMI stand on a bridge floating in the sky and stir the sea below with a jewelled spear. Drops falling from its tip become the first island. They go on to create more islands and many gods, but giving birth to the fire god KAGUTSUCHI burns IZANAMI so badly that she dies.
IZANAGI follows her to Yomi, the land of the dead, and she agrees to ask whether she may leave, on one condition: he must not look at her. He lights a torch and looks. She is rotting, and furious, and sends monsters after him; he escapes and seals the way with a boulder. Anyone who knows the Greek story of Orpheus will recognise both the rule and the mistake.
The sun goddess who hid in a cave
Washing off the underworld in a river, IZANAGI produced three great children: AMATERASU, the sun, from his left eye, TSUKUYOMI, the moon, from his right, and SUSANOO, the storm, from his nose. SUSANOO behaved so badly that AMATERASU shut herself in a cave, and the world went dark.
The other gods got her out with a party. The goddess Ame-no-Uzume danced on an upturned tub until everyone roared with laughter, and AMATERASU, wondering what could be so funny in the dark, peeped out and saw her own dazzling reflection in a mirror hung outside. A strong god pulled her into the open, and a rope was stretched across the cave so she could not go back. That mirror is said to be one of Japan's three imperial treasures, which are kept hidden from view — even at the present emperor's enthronement in 2019, the sword and jewel were carried in closed boxes.
Always bow to a kappa
Japanese folklore is crowded with YOKAI, strange creatures and spirits, and the KAPPA is one of the best-loved. It lives in rivers, is about the size of a child, and carries water in a dip on top of its head that gives it its strength. Kappa are said to pull people into rivers, but they are also extremely polite: bow to one and it bows back, spills the water and loses its power. It will do almost anything for a cucumber, which is how the cucumber sushi roll came to be called kappa-maki.
Foxes on shrine duty
Foxes are the messengers of INARI, the KAMI of rice, and stone foxes guard Inari shrines all over Japan, often holding a key or a jewel in their mouths. At Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, thousands of vermilion TORII gates, each one donated by a business or a family, form tunnels winding up a mountainside. In folk tales the KITSUNE is a shape-shifter that grows an extra tail as it gets older and more powerful, up to nine of them.