This iconic shrine in Japan is rebuilt every 20 years. This is your chance to see it.
First built 1,300 years ago, Ise Jingu Shrine has just entered its rebuilding cycle, considered a once-in-a-generation ritual that draws visitors from across the country.
It’s often said that every Japanese person hopes to visit Ise Jingu—Japan’s most sacred Shintō shrine—at least once in a lifetime. That time may be now.
The shrine has just entered Shikinen Sengu, a ritual cycle where it’s completely dismantled and rebuilt, giving visitors a once-in-a-generation chance to experience an event that has occurred every 20 years for the past 1,300 years.
Ise Jingu’s origins stretch back some 2,000 years to the sun goddess Amaterasu, one of Japan’s most important deities. According to Kojiki, Japan’s ancient chronicle of myth and history, Amaterasu cast the world in darkness when she hid in a cave to escape her destructive brother. She was eventually lured out with a bronze mirror called Yata no Kagami, restoring light to the world.
The myth credits Japan’s Emperor Suinin with sending his daughter on a journey to find a permanent resting place for the mirror. Two decades later, along the Isuzu River, surrounded by dense forest, the emperor’s daughter heard Amaterasu declare, “In this land I wish to dwell.” The shrine established there became Naikū, or Inner Shrine. Together with Gekū, the Outer Shrine built around four miles north some 500 years later, it forms Ise Jingu, a massive complex of 125 shrines spread across an area roughly the size of central Paris.
Today, because it represents Amaterasu, Shintō’s central deity, the mirror is the most sacred of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan, which includes a sword and a jade bead.
From pilgrimage route to tourist destination
Ise Jingu is tucked in the cedar forests of the Shima peninsula in eastern Mie Prefecture, hours from today’s tourist magnets of Tokyo and Kyoto. Its austere, largely undecorated buildings lack the glitz of Japan’s other destination sacred sites, such as Kyoto’s gold-coated Kinkaku-ji or the vermilion torii gate tunnels of Fushimi Inari Taisha.
Ordinary visitors are not even allowed to enter Ise Jingu’s main sanctuaries or photograph the partially obscured exteriors, glimpsing them only through wooden fences. Yet the shrine has long inspired such devotion, it’s believed to be the birthplace of mass tourism in Japan.
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During Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867), travel was tightly regulated under the ruling Tokugawa shogunate. Even so, says Robert Goree, associate professor of Japanese at Wellesley College, “you could travel for one of two reasons: health or religion.” These exceptions helped transform Ise Jingu into Japan’s foremost pilgrimage destination. Periodic mass pilgrimages known as okagemairi drew enormous crowds, peaking in 1771 with more than two million participants.
The flow of pilgrims reshaped the landscape leading to Ise. Roads were improved, lodging expanded, and religious guides known as oshi emerged to organize journeys, instruct pilgrims in ritual practice and arrange accommodations.
In front of the Inner Shrine, inns and eateries multiplied along Oharaimachi, a cobblestone street that still funnels visitors toward the shrine. Many locals offered free food and lodging, guided by the ethic of virtuously offering assistance to pilgrims. These practices helped lay the foundation for omotenashi, the Japanese concept of selfless hospitality.
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Pilgrimage, however, was not purely devotional. Travelers “would have a lot of fun along the way,” Goree says. Religious obligation provided a socially acceptable reason to travel, but the journey also offered opportunities for socializing and drinking. By the early 19th century, pilgrimage had taken on the character of contemporary mass tourism. “People were making money off it,” says Goree, “selling whatever they could to the pilgrims-slash-tourists.”
Lined with restaurants and souvenir shops, Oharaimachi is just as busy today, sustained by Ise Jingu’s roughly eight million annual visitors. Modern pilgrims and tourists sample Okagesama sake from Iseman, brewed with underground water drawn from the Isuzu River; eat local specialties like thick Ise udon noodles; and stroll through Okage Yokocho, a reconstructed Edo-period townscape.
Some establishments, including the 300-year-old Akafuku teahouse, have been in business for centuries, their longevity tied to the shrine’s constant flow of worshippers, renewed by rituals like Shikinen Sengu.
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The Shikinen Sengu cycle
The 63rd Shikinen Sengu cycle began in May 2025 with a ceremonial cutting of trees destined for the new shrine buildings. It culminates in 2033, when the sacred mirror is transferred to a newly constructed sanctuary. At that point, all 125 older structures—identical to the new ones—will be dismantled. While rebuilding rituals occur at other shrines across Japan, the scale, cost and complexity of Ise Jingu’s renewal are unmatched because “it’s the most important shrine for Japanese people,” says local guide Yuko Muraguchi.
The most sacred rites remain hidden from view. As for the mirror itself, Muraguchi says, “someone might have seen it long ago, but now we just believe it’s there.” Yet some ceremonies are public, offering a rare chance for local residents to participate and visitors to watch.
During the Okihiki Festival, hundreds of people pull massive timber logs from the old buildings to the new. For locals, the tradition strengthens community bonds and, for visitors, provides a colorful spectacle, filled with laughter and the rallying cries of “enya!” (“heave!”) making it perhaps the liveliest ceremony of the entire Shikinen Sengu event.
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Why Ise Jingu is rebuilt every 20 years
“It might seem strange, even wasteful, to dismantle a perfectly usable structure,” writes Hiroko Yoda in Eight Million Ways to Happiness. “But Shikinen Sengu is no demolition. It’s a rejuvenation.” At its core is a cyclical relationship between forest, shrine, and community.
Cypress is harvested from carefully managed forests; since 1923, a long-term forestry plan has aimed for complete self-sufficiency. Materials from dismantled buildings are reused—major pillars become torii gates or are distributed to shrines across Japan.
The 20-year cycle also sustains craftsmanship. Because every element, from architecture to serveware and clothing, is remade using traditional techniques, skills are continually practiced and passed on by the more than 2,000 artisans involved in each Shikinen Sengu cycle.
This, says Muraguchi, embodies tokowaka, the Shintō idea of attaining eternal youth through renewal. Ise Jingu looks unchanged from 1,300 years ago, yet its cyclical rebuilding ensures constant regeneration and enduring vitality. Because with change, Muraguchi says, comes “new energy.”
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How to visit Ise Jingu
This summer, visitors to Ise Jingu can experience one of the most visible and participatory phases of the Shikinen Sengu cycle:
The Okihiki Festival (May–July) sees freshly cut cypress logs ceremonially pulled toward the shrine in a festive atmosphere. For Naiku, they’ll be floated on the Isuzu River from May 9 to June 13 and for Geku, put on carriages and pulled through the streets of Ise City from July 25 to August 2.
Visitors can engage with Shikinen Sengu rituals all year round at the Sengūkan Museum, close to Gēku, where models, films, and interpretive displays explain the rituals, craftsmanship, and meaning behind the rebuilding.
