"The visitor's contact with the Ise Shrine begins with the sound of his feet on the pebbles covering the approaches.
Crossing the bridge over the river Isuzu and passing beneath the first torii, he finds himself unconsciously lapsing into silence, preoccupied with the sound he is making. Though he may try to speak with his companion, the noise of the pebbles makes hearing difficult. So he walks on in silence, straight ahead down the long avenue of cryptomerias. The crunching of the pebbles actually heightens the impression of stillness all about him; eventually drawn into the monotonous repetition of the sound he produces, he forgets all conversation, and his mind is possessed by thoughts that no speech can express.
A little further on, another sound begins to obliterate the sound of the pebbles: the rippling murmur of the Isuzu where it draws close to the road. At this spot, known as Mitarashi, with the murmur of the water all about him, he dips his hands in the stream as a token of physical purification, and in so doing is brought into still closer communication with Nature.
Back on the path, he finds the cryptomerias crowding about him ever more thickly. Great trees, centuries old, press together above his head, and in the tenebrous light that filters through them he feels himself carried back to those dim, primitive ages before man had learned to clothe his thoughts in words, when man's life was still at one with Nature."
Noboru Kawazoe in Ise. Prototype of Japanese Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965.
Ise Shrine, photo by Yoshio Watanabe
