One is meant to wander, turning at random, along these straight and open corridors. There are no walls. One looks through the shrine as though through a forest of lacquered trunks. It is at the end of the Inland Sea and it is of course, very old. The plan was first laid in the ninth century, was added to in the twelfth - and its purpose remains, this gesture to the sea, this metaphor.
Japan is truly a sea country.
Many of its most beautiful shrines face the ocean, and this, the most beautiful, opens directly upon it. More, it goes to meet it. It stretches out, like a waiting hand, both inviting and accepting. It is like a mudra, one of the positions of the hand of the Buddha, himself but one of the gods. The seaborne pilgrim is welcomed and enfolded.