Overview of Shinto Shrines (Jinja)
Because Shinto was originally a tradition that reverenced "gods" (kami) in the form of natural objects such as mountains, trees and stones, it was not originally related to any type of man-made structure. However, the custom developed of building "temporary" sacred buildings for the visitations of kami spirits during festivals, and from these beginnings jinja (usually referred to in English as "shrines") came to be built as permanent structures. The major constituent structures of jinja are honden ("main halls" for the worship of one or more deities, which came to include mythological and protohistorical personages), shrine offices, and structures with names such as heiden and noritoya used for festivals, together with corridors and symbolic gate-like structures (torii).
Next to family dwellings and storehouses, jinja were the oldest types of structures in Japan and were first built during the age of tumulus-covered graves (kofun), i.e., the roughly four centuries after 300 A.D. From earliest times they were built with gabled roofs bearing, along their top ridges, ornamental crossbeams known as chigi, which projected outwards from the roof-ends proper. The basic style of construction (known as takayukashiki) was one where the floors of the buildings were raised considerably above ground level. After the 6th century, jinja incorporated influences from the Buddhist architecture that was derived from models in China and Korea. By the Heian period, a number of different building styles had appeared, with such names as taisha-zukuri, sumiyoshi-zukuri, shinmei-zukuri, kasuga-zukuri, nagare-zukuri, hachiman-zukuri, and gongen-zukuri.
A system of periodic rebuilding, known as shikinen zotai preserves the ancient appearance of the famous Ise Shrine in Mie Prefecture. On the other hand, from the medieval era onward, much jinja architecture, in its various details, incorporated styles and tastes that were common to other architecture of the time. Many purely decorative elements were added and it came to be considered stylish to build shrine buildings with a rococo-type gorgeousness, of which the Toshogu in Nikko, built in the early Edo period, is the best-known example. However, our attention should be drawn to the fact that almost all jinja are found among natural surroundings (hills, groves of trees, etc.) which remind us of Shinto's unpretentious origins.
