Ise Grand Shrine

The gods dwell in my body.

And he has a charm of the goddess Amaterasu, the sun goddess at the Ise Grand Shrine.

So he puts his sword aside and makes a point of just subduing the tiger with his bare hands.

And he makes the tiger his buddy.

I experienced a big one just like in July that was amazing.

A place called Ise Jingu or Ise Grand Shrine, which is actually Japan's most important Shinto shrine.

And that place was off the hook.

That was magical.

That's interesting.

But that was a really powerful place.

Ise Jingu, Ise Grand Shrine.

I need to do an episode.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on August 6th that supplies of some munitions are virtually unlimited, although stockpiles of certain types are tight.

[Instrumental music] Ise Jingu, one of the most significant shrines in Japan, is rebuilt every 20 years.

This ritual has gone on for about 1,300 years, and preparation for the next one in 2033 has already begun.

Well, sacred logs have been transported as part of this ritual, and we spotlight the local spirit tying the process together.

[Chanting]

People are hauling timber for the reconstruction of Ise Jingu in a festival called Okihiki.

[Chanting]

It has a history of over 500 years.

I pulled a copy of "The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology." I pulled a copy of Joseph Campbell's "Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine," and I pulled a copy of J.E.

Cirlot's "A Dictionary of Symbols." I also pulled a pamphlet from a shrine here in Japan, the Ise Jingu Shrine, the main shrine, the premier shrine of the goddess Amaterasu or Amateras.

So when I pulled all of that stuff together, I did so because I had seen...

This is where I get my i- ideas from.

You will find that exact same concept if you were to go to this place.

I have a pamphlet of it here.

This place, Ise Jingu, which is just east of Nara, Japan.

You will find that the goddess is preserved behind a veil.

It's got the famous graveyard there and, um, the Shojin Ryori, which is the, uh, vegetarian food, and I thought that would be an interesting experience to weave in.

And then I guess the final factor was there was a few places I'd never yet managed to get to, like, uh, Ise Jingu, the big shrine, um, that I thought if I can, you know, do-- plot this journey through the middle of nowhere and end up there, that would be a, a successful journey, a journey well complete.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I, I haven't been to Ise as well.

Um, yeah, and I think the...

I mean, one of the...

There were so many different memorable food experiences, but, um, actually, having mentioned Ise Jingu, those, um, from, from that shrine, um, on the, on the Kii Peninsula, we got the ferry across to a little town called Irago.

Again, never heard of it.

It is on account of such customs that we find the imperial capitals so frequently removed from one site to another in ancient days.

The rebuilding every twenty years of Ise Temple, the supreme shrine of the Sun Goddess, is an example of one of these ancient rites which still obtain at the present day.

The observance of these customs was only possible with some form of construction as that furnished by our system of wooden architecture, easily pulled down, easily built up.

A more lasting style, employing brick and stone, would have rendered migrations impracticable, as indeed they became when the more stable and massive wooden construction of China was adopted by us after the Nara period.