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Setonaikai NP, Hiroshima
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The 60-ton gate is not anchored by burying its great posts in the seabed: it rests on a base of pine piles and stays upright through its own weight. About 4 tons of stones are hidden inside its hollow top beams.
For years, the present gate was counted as the 8th. A 2023 repair report’s fresh reading of historical records added an earlier predecessor, making the 1875 gate the 9th in its lineage.
When rebuilt in 1875, the Great Torii was left unpainted amid the Meiji-era effort to remove Buddhist influence from shrines. It was painted vermilion in 1910—a vivid color with a practical role in protecting the wood.
The giant camphor pillars came from different parts of Japan: the eastern one from present-day Miyazaki and the western one from Kagawa. The western post was lengthened with a section of Miyajima camphor.
The 2019–22 restoration uncovered damage invisible from outside: termites and decay had hollowed the main pillars, leaving a cavity about 40–50 cm wide and 4 m deep. Repairers fitted sound camphor wood into the void.
The sea has its own woodworkers: shrine records describe shipworms boring 5–8 mm holes and tiny crustacean borers making holes about 1 mm wide. The marine damage was so persistent that the side supports needed repair just 7 years after the 1875 rebuilding.
Metal ornaments on the gate’s ridge show a sun on the east side and a crescent moon on the west. They’re small details on a huge structure—and a reminder to look beyond the famous vermilion outline.
A surviving plaque from the 1547 predecessor, now kept among shrine treasures, bears copper characters modeled on Emperor Go-Nara’s calligraphy for “Itsukushima Daimyojin.” Its decorative frame includes Buddhist imagery.
