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Gateway to heaven

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Admirers of fine scenery and nature's glory, the Japanese held a beauty contest several centuries ago and came up with the top three views in their country. Only one of them - the 'floating' torii (gate to a shrine) of Miyajima - is familiar outside Japan. A visit is likely to put it into a few personal top 10s too.

Miyajima - 'Shrine Island' - is a mountainous, wooded isle 2km to 3km offshore from southwest Honshu, in the Seto Inland Sea. As the ferry draws near, there rises from the waters a mystical vision - a great curved-lintel torii, or gate, the colour of a red-hot poker. The formal entrance to the ancient Shinto shrine of Itsukushima and the symbolic gateway from the temporal to the spiritual realm, for the Japanese this torii is of supreme value. It is revered as the presage to one of the country's most holy places.

The island of Itsukushima, the formal name for Miyajima, has been a sacred place since time immemorial. It is dotted with shrines and is home to hundreds of tame deer, some of which greet visitors disembarking in the little dockside town with a sniff.

Deer are considered sacred in the Shinto religion because they are regarded as messengers of the gods, and so they roam freely on Miyajima. The human inhabitants of the sacred island number only 2,000, all living beside the jetty and the adjacent main shrine. No ordinary town, it is governed by two strict rules that respect the island's holiness: no births and no burials.

A shoreside path, flanked by stone lanterns and pine trees, leads visitors to a headland with fine views of the gate. Built of strong camphor wood with four stabilising legs, the 16-metre-tall torii is constantly subjected to the sea's assault and has been reconstructed 17 times in its long history, the last time being in 1875. The six-legged gate is not implanted in the seabed but simply rests its enormous weight on it. Majestic and mysterious, solid yet seeming to float, it's a sight that is hard to tear yourself away from - but tear yourself away you should because Shrine Island offers much more.

Sheltered in a cove is the Itsukushima Shrine, the focus of the island's spirituality for 14 centuries. A complex of wooden pavilions, walkways and piers painted in the same bright red as the torii, the shrine is raised on pillars and spreads over the foreshore. It was built to be in the water at high tide because nobody was supposed to live on the sacred island, not even priests. Residents would offend its goddess, Ichikishima-Hime-no-Mikoto - from whom comes the name Itsukushima. Originating in AD592 but built in its present form in 1168 by the powerful samurai general Taira no Kiyomori, the shrine was carefully reconstructed by local warlord Mori Motonari in 1571.

Up above it on the headland stand two majestic monuments. Senjokaku Shrine, the Hall of 1,000 Mats (in fact, the vast floor area can accommodate 857 tatami mats), is a huge wooden structure designed to shelter sutra-chanting Buddhist monks. Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the warlord who unified Japan in the era, began building Senjokaku in 1587 with the intention of honouring war casualties. Standing next to it, the vermilion Five-Storey Pagoda, built in 1407 to enshrine an important Buddha image, is a dramatic synthesis of Japanese and Chinese styles.

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