The Shinto shrine at Izumo honors Susa-no-O, the Storm God and the ancestral deity of Japan's second most powerful prehistoric clan (after the Imperial family itself). The festival we encountered in full swing here was only of minor importance in the shrine's ritual calendar, but the complex was alive with festival banners and lanterns.
The braided straw ropes with cut and folded strips of white paper (symbolizing lightening) hung across the shrine's major entrances symbolize that all beyond constitutes "sacred space".
Surrounding the main shrine compound are numerous suboridnate shrines. Many of these structures date back several hundred years; all preserve a fundamental form of Japanese traditional shrine architecture.
Main buildings in the complex sport ornate bardgeboard struts spiking into the sky above the bark roofs and the unpainted structures beneath and forming the letter "X"
These are "condos" set aside for visiting deities. During August, all Shinto deities (kami) make there way here to Izumo for the entire month, making this "the month without gods" throughout the rest of Japan.
Festival activities of all sorts -- a marketplace, a sumo tournament, sacred music and dance performances -- enlivened our morning visit to the shrine grounds.
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