Hi, this is Ai.
Here is a question my grandfather likes to ask people who visit Ise for the first time: “How many shrines do you think Jingu is?” Most people answer one, or maybe two if they have heard of the Inner and Outer Shrines. The answer is 125.
I remember laughing when he first told me, because I thought he was joking. But it is true, and it is official: what everyone calls “Ise Jingu” — or properly just Jingu — is a single institution made up of 125 shrines, scattered across Ise City and the neighboring towns of southern Mie Prefecture. Some are grand sanctuaries surrounded by ancient forest. Some are a single small wooden structure beside a rice field, easy to walk past without noticing.
Once I understood the system behind those 125, my walks around Ise changed completely. So today I want to map it out: what the categories are, which kami live where, and why this many shrines exist under one name at all. Everything here follows the official information published by the Jingu Shicho (the shrine administration), and I will note where I am summarizing their materials.
The five categories that make up 125
According to the official Jingu website, the 125 shrines break down like this:
| Category | Count | What they are |
|---|---|---|
| Shogu (正宮) | 2 | The two main sanctuaries: Kotaijingu (Naiku) and Toyouke Daijingu (Geku) |
| Betsugu (別宮) | 14 | ”Detached palaces” — the highest-ranked shrines after the two main sanctuaries |
| Sessha (摂社) | 43 | Auxiliary shrines listed in the Engishiki register of the tenth century |
| Massha (末社) | 24 | Smaller shrines recorded in Jingu’s early ceremonial registers, but not in the Engishiki |
| Shokansha (所管社) | 42 | Shrines under direct Jingu management, closely tied to its rituals and provisioning |
Two plus fourteen plus forty-three plus twenty-four plus forty-two: 125.
The distinction between sessha and massha confused me for a long time, because from the outside the two look almost identical — a small thatched-roof shrine behind a simple fence. The difference is essentially documentary. Shrines that appear in the Engishiki, the great legal-ritual code compiled in the tenth century, are sessha. Shrines that appear only in Jingu’s own older ceremonial registers are massha. In other words, the hierarchy of Jingu was partly fixed by what was written down more than a thousand years ago. If you are curious about that document itself, I wrote about it in the Engishiki, the tenth-century law behind the Sengu.
The shokansha are different again: they are shrines Jingu manages directly because they are woven into its ritual life — including shrines connected to the wells, the salt, and the rice used in daily offerings. I will come back to them, because to me they are the most moving part of the whole system.
The two poles: Amaterasu and Toyouke
Everything in Jingu orbits around two sanctuaries.
Kotaijingu, the Inner Shrine (Naiku), enshrines Amaterasu-Omikami, the sun deity regarded in Shinto tradition as the ancestral kami of the imperial line. It stands upstream on the Isuzu River, deep in a cedar and cypress forest, and it is the spiritual center not just of Ise but — in the traditional view — of Shinto itself.
Toyouke Daijingu, the Outer Shrine (Geku), enshrines Toyouke-no-Omikami, the kami of food, clothing, and shelter. According to Jingu’s official account, Toyouke was called to Ise to provide sacred meals to Amaterasu, and to this day the priests prepare offerings of food at the Geku’s Mikeden hall every single morning and evening — a rite that has continued, the shrine says, for around 1,500 years.
I find this pairing quietly profound. The highest deity is not imagined as self-sufficient; she needs to be fed, and an entire second grand sanctuary exists for the work of provisioning. It is a theology in which sustenance — growing rice, drawing water, making salt — is elevated to sacred work. If you want the full story of why Toyouke came to Ise, and why custom says to visit the Geku before the Naiku, I wrote about it in why the Geku comes first.
The fourteen betsugu: rougher spirits, wind, earth, and the moon
The fourteen betsugu are where the theology gets really interesting. Ten belong to the Naiku and four to the Geku, and several of them enshrine not a different kami, but a different aspect of the same kami.
Photo: MaedaAkihiko, Wikimedia Commons / CC0
The rough spirit: aramitama
In Shinto thought, a kami can be understood as having a gentle, harmonious aspect (nigimitama) and a rough, dynamic, active aspect (aramitama). At Jingu this is not an abstract idea — it has an address. Aramatsuri-no-miya, the highest-ranked betsugu of the Naiku, enshrines the aramitama of Amaterasu-Omikami. Taka-no-miya, the highest-ranked betsugu of the Geku, enshrines the aramitama of Toyouke-no-Omikami.
Grandpa explained it to me like this: the main sanctuary is where you offer gratitude, and the aramitama shrine is where people have traditionally brought their personal resolutions — the energetic aspect of the kami suits an energetic request. I do not know how far back that folk custom goes, so please take it as local habit rather than doctrine, but it does mean that many visitors from Ise pray at both.
Wind, earth, and the moon
Two betsugu are dedicated to the wind: Kazahinomi-no-miya in the Naiku precinct and Kaze-no-miya in the Geku precinct, both enshrining the wind kami Shinatsuhiko and Shinatobe. According to the shrine’s official history, these were originally lower-ranked shrines, but were elevated to betsugu status after the storms that repelled the Mongol invasion fleets in the thirteenth century were attributed to their kami. A prayer for gentle winds — for weather that lets rice grow — was suddenly a prayer that had, in the eyes of the medieval court, saved the country.
Tsuchi-no-miya, also in the Geku precinct, enshrines Otsuchinomioya-no-kami, the guardian deity of the ground of the Geku itself — the land the shrine stands on has its own protector. Uniquely among the betsugu, its sanctuary faces east rather than south, a detail Grandpa pointed out to me on a walk and which the official guide notes as well.
Photo: MaedaAkihiko, Wikimedia Commons / CC0
The moon has shrines too — two of them, with names written differently but read almost the same. Tsukiyomi-no-miya (月讀宮), a betsugu of the Naiku, stands between the two grand shrines and actually contains four betsugu sanctuaries in a row, including those of Izanagi and Izanami, the parent kami of Japanese myth. Tsukiyomi-no-miya (月夜見宮), a betsugu of the Geku, sits in an ordinary neighborhood a short walk from Ise-shi Station, a pocket of forest surrounded by houses. Sun and moon, inner and outer — the symmetry is not accidental, and standing in the quiet of either moon shrine after the crowds of the main sanctuaries is an experience I recommend to everyone.
The remaining betsugu stand farther out: Takihara-no-miya and its companion shrine deep in the mountains of Taki District, Izawa-no-miya on the Shima Peninsula near the sea, and Yamatohime-no-miya, established in the twentieth century for the princess who, according to the ancient chronicles, first brought Amaterasu to Ise. Fourteen shrines, and among them: the sun’s rough spirit, the wind, the earth, the moon, the sea’s edge, and the founder’s memory.
The quiet majority: shrines for salt, water, and rice
Here is the part that changed how I see my own city. The 43 sessha, 24 massha, and 42 shokansha are mostly small — many are a single sanctuary you could circle in ten steps — and they are everywhere: beside train tracks, behind supermarkets, at the edge of rice paddies, in fishing villages along the coast. They spread across Ise and into the neighboring cities and districts of southern Mie, which means “Jingu” is not a place you visit so much as a landscape you move through.
And their kami are wonderfully concrete. Among the shokansha are shrines connected to the well that supplies water for the daily offerings, shrines for the kami of the rice grown in Jingu’s own sacred paddies, and Mishiodono-jinja in Futami, tied to the salt that Jingu still produces for its rituals from the waters of Ise Bay. There are kami of gates, kami of the kitchen fire, kami of the riverbanks. The whole apparatus of feeding and housing a deity — water, salt, rice, fire, land — is itself enshrined.
I once thought of this as bureaucratic, honestly. A list of 125 seemed like accounting. But walking it is different. The system reads less like a hierarchy and more like a statement: nothing that sustains life is too small to be sacred.
Walking the 125 with Grandpa
This summer, on a morning when it was already hot by eight o’clock, Grandpa took me to one of the sessha in a neighborhood I will not name, because part of its charm is that nobody goes there. It sat behind a low stone wall between two ordinary houses. Someone had swept the gravel that morning — the broom lines were still crisp — and fresh sakaki branches stood in the holders. No signboard in English, no visitors, just cicadas.
“Somebody sweeps every one of the 125,” Grandpa said. “Think about that.” I did think about it, and I have not stopped thinking about it. The two grand sanctuaries have their famous rituals, but the small shrines are maintained with the same seriousness — the same style of fence, the same offerings, and, when their buildings wear out, repair and rebuilding in the same plain cypress style. I had planned to write down the shrine’s name and deity in my notebook, and instead I mostly stood there listening to the cicadas. Grandpa said that was the correct research method. I am fairly sure he was teasing me.
How to experience the system as a visitor
You do not need to visit 125 shrines to feel how this works. (Please do not try to do it in one trip. I attempted a “betsugu day” once, misread the bus schedule, and saw exactly three.) A realistic path:
- At the Geku: after the main sanctuary, follow the short loop to Taka-no-miya, Tsuchi-no-miya, and Kaze-no-miya — three betsugu within a few minutes’ walk. You will have seen the aramitama, earth, and wind theology in one visit.
- At the Naiku: after the main sanctuary, take the path up to Aramatsuri-no-miya, and pause at Kazahinomi-no-miya by its lovely bridge on the way out.
- Between them: Tsukiyomi-no-miya (the Naiku’s moon shrine) is a short detour from the bus route between the two grand shrines, and its four-sanctuaries-in-a-row layout makes the family structure of the myths visible.
- If you have a car and a free half day: Takihara-no-miya, about an hour away, is often called a miniature of the Naiku itself, with a river approach of extraordinary stillness.
And wherever you stay in Ise, look at the neighborhood map. There is a decent chance one of the 125 is within walking distance of your accommodation, quietly swept, waiting for nobody in particular. As of this writing in August 2026, the Shikinen Sengu rebuilding cycle is underway, so over the coming years you may also see fresh timber and new sanctuaries appearing across the system — the renewal reaches far beyond the two famous shrines.
Sources
- Jingu Shicho official website, “The 125 Shrines” and individual shrine pages (isejingu.or.jp)
- Jingu Shicho official website, ritual calendar and explanations of the daily offering rite (Higoto Asayu Omikesai)
Where this article touches on history and doctrine, I have followed the official Jingu materials above; the folk customs I mention (such as personal prayers at the aramitama shrines) are local practice as told to me, not official teaching.