Izanagi Jingū

Izanagi Jingu.

On the small island of Awaji, in the Inland Sea between Honshu and Shikoku, stands one of the oldest shrines in Japan.

According to the oldest written records of this country, Awaji is the very first island that was created — the beginning of the geography of Japan. This shrine is said to mark the place where the divine couple, having finished their work of forming the islands, finally came to rest.

What is striking about this shrine is something only revealed twice a year.

On the spring and autumn equinoxes, the sun rises and sets along an exact line that connects this shrine to other ancient sacred sites across the country — Mount Fuji to the east, Izumo Taisha to the west. Modern measurement has confirmed: the alignment is precise within fractions of a degree.

How did people, more than a thousand years ago, place these shrines on a single line stretching across hundreds of kilometers?

Two beautiful camphor trees stand inside the grounds, their roots fused at the ground, their trunks separating, then growing toward the sky in their own directions. Together they have lived for nine hundred years. Couples come to stand between them.

The world feels less random when you stand on a place like this. Not because it has been explained, but because someone, long ago, was paying careful attention to where things should be placed — and managed to do it well enough that it still works.

Step inside. Look up at the trees. The morning sun, on certain days, falls exactly between them.