Ise Jingu

Visited by 10 million worshipers each year, Ise Jingu has been a ‘once-in-a-lifetime journey’ for Japanese people since olden times. Records show that that Ise Jingu was extremely popular among people in pre-modern Japan. One tenth of the Japanese population made the pilgrimage during the Edo Period, which lasted from 400 years ago to 150 years ago. Japan’s oldest chronicle, the ‘Nihon Shoki,’ tells a legend in which the goddess Amaterasu Omikami chose to be enshrined in the Ise region of Mie around 2,000 years ago because of its abundant nature.