Torii (shrine gate)
The gateway at the entrance to a Shinto shrine: two upright posts joined by a cap beam and a tie beam. It marks the border between the shrine’s sacred ground and the everyday world outside.
Meaning
Kokugakuin University’s Encyclopedia of Shinto describes the torii as a gateway arch marking the entrance to a sacred area. Two upright posts carry a cap beam (kasagi) that runs past them on either side, and below it a tie beam (nuki) links the posts. A shrine may have several. The largest, the “first torii” (ichi no torii), stands on the approach to the grounds, and others inside the precinct mark rising degrees of holiness on the way to the main sanctuary (honden). Wood and stone are the usual materials, though nothing is ruled out. Torii belong to Shinto, a living religion, and on a Japanese map the same shape marks a shrine. Guardian lion-dogs often sit beside them.
Origin and history
Nobody knows where the torii came from. The Encyclopedia of Shinto says no theory of its origin has won general acceptance: some hold that it is native to Japan, others that it came from abroad. JAANUS, a dictionary of Japanese art and architecture, lists the candidates abroad: the torana gates round the Great Stupa at Sanchi in India, the Chinese pailou and the Korean kousenmon gate. It also gives the case for a Japanese origin, in which a rope stretched between two posts was replaced by a beam; two pillars joined only by a sacred rope still stand before the worship hall of Ōmiwa Jinja. Basil Hall Chamberlain in 1905 leaned to the continent. The name is just as uncertain: “bird perch” is one reading, and “pass through and enter” another. Whatever their origin, JAANUS judges torii to have been common by the mid-Heian period.
Straight and curved torii
JAANUS sorts every torii into two families. Shinmei torii have straight members. Myōjin torii have curved ones, with the cap beam sweeping up at its ends, as in the drawing here. Within each family are endless named styles, some called after a feature and some after the shrine itself.
The oldest torii
The oldest stone torii, JAANUS records, is at Hachiman Jinja in Yamagata prefecture and dates from about the middle of the twelfth century. The oldest wooden one still standing is a ryōbu torii of 1535 at Kubohachiman Jinja in Yamanashi prefecture.
Torii at Buddhist temples
Torii are not only at shrines. The Encyclopedia of Shinto points to the stone torii of the temple Shitennōji in Osaka. From the twelfth century, JAANUS explains, shrines were built inside temple grounds as kami and buddhas were worshipped together, and torii marked their entrances. Chamberlain records the other direction. Buddhists had hung tablets on torii and turned up the corners of the beams, and when the shrines were “purified” after 1868, the tablets were among the first things taken down. From then on only the simplest torii were built, because only those were thought ancient and Japanese.
Passing through a torii
Jinja Honchō, the association of Shinto shrines, tells visitors that the torii marks the border between the sacred space of the jinja and the everyday world outside. Many people pause and bow their heads slightly before walking through.
Read next
- Next in Japanese symbolsKomainu (guardian lion-dogs)A pair of lion-like guardians at the entrance to a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple, one usually with its mouth open and the other with it closed. They are there to keep evil away from the kami.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsGateway of the Sun (the Staff God)A doorway cut from a single block of andesite at Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, carved above the opening with a god holding a staff in each hand. Who the figure is remains open: Britannica lists a sun god, a thunder god and Viracocha among the readings.
See also
Amaterasu (the sun kami), Raijin and Fūjin (thunder and wind), Kamon (family crests) and the mitsudomoe, Chrysanthemum seal (imperial crest), Mount Fuji, Japanese dragon (ryū).
Sources
- Torii (Encyclopedia of Shinto), Encyclopedia of Shinto, Kokugakuin University, “Torii” (Mori Mizue), Kokugakuin University, entry text
- torii (JAANUS), JAANUS: Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System, “torii”, JAANUS (Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System), entry text
- Jinja (Jinja Honchō), Jinja Honchō (Association of Shinto Shrines), “Jinja” (English pamphlet), Jinja Honchō, p. 5, “Torii”
- Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese (1905), Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, fifth edition, London: John Murray, 1905, John Murray (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), pp. 482–483, “Torii”
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from lines or squares and rectangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
Added .