A Working Shrine in a Modern City

For all its antiquity Atsuta is a busy urban shrine, its 190,000-square-metre forest an island of green in southern Nagoya that draws close to nine million visitors a year, with the largest crowds at the New Year hatsumode. More than seventy rites are performed annually; the chief festival, the Rei Sai on 5 June, fills the grounds with offerings and martial-arts displays. The precinct also carries its own layers of history: the Nobunaga-bei, a roofed earthen wall some seven metres high, was given by Oda Nobunaga in 1560 in thanks for his victory at nearby Okehazama, and survives as one of Japan's three great historic walls.

The shrine's treasure hall holds well over four thousand objects, including a nationally designated collection of swords and mirrors that reflect Atsuta's long association with the smith's craft. Rebuilt in 1935 in the pure Shinmei style shared with Ise and restored again after the Second World War, the halls present a deliberately plain, unpainted cypress architecture that expresses the aesthetic of the oldest Shinto shrines.