Hana-no-Iwaya Shrine

From Route 42 you see a roadside station and a short path into the trees. Walk through and there is no hall at all, only a grey cliff about 45 metres high rising straight out of a small open yard, with a long rope hanging from its top down to a pine at the edge of the grounds. That is the whole shrine, and it is more affecting than a hall would be.

The Nihon Shoki says that Izanami, the goddess who with Izanagi gave birth to the islands and the gods, died giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi and was buried at the village of Arima in Kumano, in the province of Kii. Arima is where you are standing, and the shrine takes the rock to be her grave. It describes itself as the oldest shrine in Japan, on the strength of that 720 text. You do not have to accept the claim to see why people came: a rock this size above the sea is the kind of place that was worshipped long before anyone wrote about it.

Twice a year, on 2 February and 2 October, the shrine holds its Otsuna-kake ceremony. A rope of about 170 metres, twisted from seven strands of rice straw and hung with streamers of flowers and fans, is run from the top of the rock to the sacred pine in the south corner of the grounds. The ceremony starts at 10:00; part of it takes the rope across Route 42 towards Shichiri-mihama beach, and visitors can join in carrying it. It is a Mie Prefecture intangible folk cultural property.

Hana-no-Iwaya counts as part of the Iseji, the eastern Kumano pilgrimage road from Ise, which is how it belongs to the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range, inscribed as World Heritage in 2004. Shichiri-mihama, the long pebble beach just across the road, is part of the same route.

The visit itself takes 20 minutes. Getting here is the commitment: Kumanoshi Station is about three hours by limited express from Nagoya. Pair it with the beach and a plate of mehari-zushi at the roadside station, and make it a stop on a longer Kumano trip rather than a day out on its own.