Izumo Taisha

The main sanctuary (honden) of Izumo Taisha was built in 1744 (Enkyo 1) and stands 8 jo, about 24 meters, tall. Shimane Prefecture describes it as the tallest in Japan among shrine buildings. It was designated a National Treasure in 1952. The enshrined deity, Okuninushi, is told of as the god who made the land and then returned it to Amaterasu, and the shrine relates that he was then told to have his dwelling built with tall, thick pillars and thick, wide boards. The sanctuary's height and the thickness of its pillars connect directly to that account of its origins.

The style is taisha-zukuri, with a cypress-bark roof and the entrance on the gable end of a gabled building. The shrine presents this as preserving Japan's oldest style of shrine architecture, and Shimane Prefecture likewise calls it important, along with the shinmei-zukuri of Ise Jingu, for considering how shrine architecture came about. The plan is square, with nine pillars set out in the pattern of the character for rice field (田) and the Shin-no-Mihashira pillar at the center. Okuninushi's seat does not face south like the front of the sanctuary but west. In front of it is a guest seat for the five Kotoamatsukami deities, and near the central pillar the child deity Wakafutsunushi is enshrined.

The history of its height is not a straight line. According to the shrine, a sanctuary of the full shoden-shiki form fell in 1108 (Tennin 1) and was rebuilt in 1115 (Eikyu 3) with timber that had drifted ashore at Inasa Beach. From the medieval period on the scale was reduced to the temporary karidono-shiki form, and the last of these, in 1609 (Keicho 14), was about 19.8 meters to the tips of its chigi roof finials. The shoden-shiki form returned in 1667 (Kanbun 7), when the shogunate donated 2,000 kan and the height became 8 jo. Today's roughly 24 meters is a height recovered in the Edo period.

Excavation speaks to the height before that. In April 2000, during underground work north of the worship hall, near the center of the grounds, a huge pillar made of three bundled cedar trunks, each about 135 centimeters in diameter, was found. The shrine relates that the ancient sanctuary had pillars made of three great trees bound with iron rings and stood 16 jo (48 meters) tall, and it treats the Kanawa Gozoei Sashizu, handed down in the Senge family of Izumo kuni no miyatsuko, as the plan of that building. Shimane Prefecture explains that the arrangement of the excavated pillar bases nearly matches this plan and points to a sanctuary about 48 meters tall. The central pillar of this ancient sanctuary is displayed in the Treasure Hall.

The present sanctuary has not stayed as built either. It has gone through four restoration rites, in 1809, 1881, 1953 and 2013. In the latest, during the Heisei era, the deity was moved to a temporary hall in 2008, dismantling of the great roof began in 2009, the cypress-bark reroofing finished in 2011, and the deity returned to the sanctuary on May 10, 2013. After the sanctuary, the surrounding shrines are worth a walk. Sogano-yashiro, north of the sanctuary, enshrines Susanoo, regarded as Okuninushi's parent deity, while the Jukusha halls on the east and west serve as lodgings for the gods gathering from across Japan during the Kamiari Festival in the tenth lunar month.