Hi, this is Ai.
Autumn is finally showing up in Ise. The mornings along the Isuzu River are cool enough for a light jacket, the rice around town is being cut, and the big crowds of the summer Okihiki are now a memory. It is a good season for thinking slowly.
So today I want to try something a little different. Most of what I write about the Shikinen Sengu is about what happens: which ceremony, which year, which timber. This time I want to ask why, in the deepest sense. Why would a community spend eight years and enormous effort to replace buildings that are, by any engineering standard, still perfectly fine? What idea sits underneath that?
The quick answer people often give is “because everything is impermanent.” I used to say that too. But the more I read, and the more I asked Grandpa, the more I think that answer is only half right, and maybe even a little backwards. Let me explain.
A Word Before We Start: Shinto Has No Single “Theology”
I want to be honest about my title first. “Shinto theology” sounds like there is one official book that explains everything. There is not.
Shinto grew up mostly as practice: rituals, offerings, seasonal festivals, the care of sacred places. It has classical texts such as the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, and it has centuries of later thinkers who tried to systematize it, but there is no single scripture that defines doctrine the way some other religions have. So when I talk about “the philosophy of the Sengu,” I am really talking about two things:
- What Jingu itself says about the meaning of the Sengu today, and
- Ideas that scholars and writers commonly use to interpret it.
I will try to keep those two separate, so you know which is which. Where something is interpretation rather than official teaching, I will say so.
What Jingu Itself Says: “Always Fresh, Never Changing”
Let us start with the most authoritative voice, the shrine itself.
On its official page about the Shikinen Sengu, Jingu explains that every twenty years the shrine buildings, together with the sacred apparel and treasures, are all made new, and that the great significance of this lies in holding eternally unchanging rituals in shrine buildings that are always fresh. The same page describes the Sengu as a bond of the heart linking distant ancestors with people living now.
Read that sentence again, because I think it contains the whole puzzle. There are two halves:
- Always fresh (the buildings, the treasures, the materials)
- Never changing (the rituals, the forms, the relationship with the kami)
Jingu’s page on the thought behind the Sengu develops this further. It explains that by repeating the renewal, the shrine can be seen “new now and at any time,” while keeping a form that does not change, and that the names, shapes, materials, uses and techniques of the sacred objects are passed securely to the next generation. It also notes that the sacred apparel and treasures, 714 types and 1,576 items, preserve cultural styles going back to the Hakuhō, Nara and Heian periods.
So the goal, as Jingu frames it, is not to celebrate things passing away. It is the opposite. The goal is permanence, and renewal is the method.
Tokowaka: Staying Young, Forever
The word most often used to name this idea is tokowaka (常若). It is written with characters meaning “always” and “young.” You could translate it as “eternal youth” or “ever-renewing freshness.”
You will see tokowaka in a huge number of books, essays and magazine features about Ise. It has become the standard key word for explaining the Sengu, and I think it fits the official description above very well. But I want to be careful: in my reading of Jingu’s official Sengu pages, the explanation is given in plain sentences rather than as a formal doctrine called tokowaka. So I treat tokowaka as the widely used name for the idea, not as a technical term defined by the shrine.
What does tokowaka feel like in practice? Grandpa explained it to me with rice.
He said: “Think about the rice fields you walked past this morning. Every year the old plants are cut, and every spring new ones are planted. Nobody says the rice field died. The field is the same field it was when I was a boy. It stays alive precisely because it is renewed every year.”
That image helped me a lot. The Sengu is a bit like a very slow rice harvest. The thing stays alive because its materials are replaced. Stop replacing them, and the thing does not stay the same. It decays.
Why freshness matters in Shinto
Here I move into interpretation, so please read it as that.
Many writers connect tokowaka with the value Shinto places on purity and freshness. Rituals of purification, the new clothes worn for festivals, the fresh food offered to the kami each day, the use of plain unpainted hinoki wood: all of these suggest a sensibility in which what is fresh and clean is closest to the sacred. From that angle, a building that has aged and weathered is not “more authentic.” It has simply lost some of its freshness, and restoring that freshness is an act of respect.
I find this persuasive, but I also know it is a modern reading laid over a very old practice. The people who began the Sengu in the late seventh century did not leave us an essay explaining their reasons.
Impermanence Is a Different Idea
Now for the part that surprised me most.
Many visitors, including me a few years ago, instinctively connect the Sengu with the Buddhist idea of mujō (無常), impermanence. It is an idea very deep in Japanese culture. The most famous example is probably the opening of Hōjōki (方丈記), written by Kamo no Chōmei in 1212, which begins with the image of a flowing river whose water is never the same water, and compares people and their houses to the foam on its surface, appearing and vanishing.
It is beautiful, and it is sad on purpose. Mujō asks us to see that everything we cling to will pass, and to loosen our grip.
But look at what the Sengu actually does. It does not let the shrine pass away. It works extremely hard so that the shrine never passes away. The river in Hōjōki is a teacher of letting go. The Sengu is closer to a promise of holding on, by letting the materials go and keeping the form.
So I have started to describe it like this:
- Mujō says: because everything changes, nothing lasts.
- Tokowaka says: because we change everything on time, it can last forever.
Both ideas start from the same observation. Wood rots, thatch wears out, people grow old. But they draw almost opposite conclusions. One accepts the passing; the other answers it with renewal.
I do not want to make this too tidy. Japan’s religious history is full of mixing, and for many centuries Buddhist and Shinto ideas lived side by side, including around Ise. Plenty of people standing at the new sanctuary in 2033 will probably feel both at once: a little ache that the old building is going, and a joy that the new one is here. I think that mixed feeling is honest. But when someone tells me “the Sengu is about impermanence,” I now gently add: “It is about impermanence the way a vaccine is about a virus.” It takes impermanence seriously so that it can overcome it.
“Naka-ima”: Living in the Middle of Time
There is one more word I want to mention, carefully, because I found it fascinating but I am not an expert.
Naka-ima (中今) means something like “the middle of now.” It appears in imperial proclamations recorded in the Shoku Nihongi, a court chronicle completed in 797. Later Shinto thinkers, especially in the modern period, took it up as an expression of a particular sense of time: that the present moment is not a thin slice between a dead past and an unknown future, but the living center where all of time meets.
I need to flag clearly that interpretations of naka-ima vary a lot among scholars, and the word has also been used in political contexts in the twentieth century. Jingu does not use it on its Sengu pages, as far as I can see. So I share it only as one lens some writers use, not as something the shrine teaches.
Still, as a lens, it fits the Sengu strangely well. Each Sengu is a “now” that contains the past (forms and techniques inherited from over a thousand years ago) and the future (young craftspeople learning skills they will pass on in twenty and forty years). I wrote before about how the twenty-year cycle lines up with generations of craft transmission. Naka-ima gives that practical fact a philosophical shape: the present generation is the middle link, holding both ends.
Old Wood Does Not Simply Disappear
One thing that helped me understand tokowaka as something concrete, not just a pretty word, is what happens to the old buildings.
If the Sengu were only about impermanence, you might expect the old sanctuary to be torn down and forgotten. Instead, much of the old timber goes on to a second life. The best-known example is right at the entrance to Naiku. According to Jingu’s page on the Uji Bridge, the great torii gates at both ends of the bridge are rebuilt using the ridge-supporting pillars (munamochi-bashira) of the old main sanctuaries of Naiku and Geku. The Nikkei newspaper reported in October 2014 that the Uji Bridge torii had been renewed for the first time in twenty years using hinoki from the former main sanctuaries.
And the chain does not stop there. Those torii are later passed on again to other places, and old timber from the Sengu has been given to shrines around Japan for their own repairs and rebuilding.
So when I walk under the Uji Bridge torii, I am walking under wood that once held up the roof over the kami. That is not the end of a building. That is a building moving outward into the rest of the country. If mujō is a river that carries things away, this feels more like a river that carries things onward.
Standing Next to the Empty Site
My favorite way to feel all of this is not through books, though. It is through a quiet place many visitors walk past without noticing.
At both Naiku and Geku, the main sanctuary stands on one of two neighboring plots. The other plot sits beside it, empty, covered in white stones, waiting. At the next Sengu, the new sanctuary is built on the empty plot, and the old one is later dismantled, so the shrine keeps moving back and forth between the two sites.
The first time Grandpa and I stood beside the empty site together, I said, a bit stupidly, “It is so sad and empty.” I was feeling very Hōjōki.
Grandpa shook his head. “It is not empty,” he said. “It is waiting. The next shrine is already there. We just cannot see it yet.”
I was a little embarrassed, but I think he was right, and it changed how I see the whole Sengu. The empty site is not a ruin. It is the future, reserved in advance. For twenty years it sits beside the present shrine like a promise. Then the promise is kept, and a new empty site appears on the other side, holding the next promise.
I cannot think of a clearer picture of tokowaka. The shrine is not a single building that ages and dies. It is a rhythm between two places, repeated for more than a thousand years.
Where the 63rd Sengu Stands, as of September 24, 2026
Since this blog is also my running record of the current Sengu, here is a short status note, written on September 24, 2026, based on Jingu’s official schedule for the 63rd Shikinen Sengu and the event information published by the local Ise Gosengū Committee.
- 2025: The preparations formally began with the Yamaguchi-sai and Konomoto-sai in May 2025, followed by ceremonies for felling and bringing in sacred timber, and the Mifunashiro-sai in September 2025.
- Spring 2026: The Kozukuri-hajime-sai, the ceremony that marks the start of timber work for the new buildings, was held in April 2026, along with the opening ceremony for timber-pulling.
- Summer 2026: The first phase of the Okihiki, the timber-pulling events carried out by Ise residents, took place over late spring and summer, with the river-pulling for Naiku concluding at the start of August.
- Next: The official schedule lists a second phase of Okihiki for 2027, with participation open to people from across Japan. The Sengyo, the transfer of the kami to the new main sanctuary of Naiku, is scheduled for October 2033. These are published plans, not events that have happened yet.
As I write this, the timber that was pulled through town this summer is being prepared for the work ahead. Nothing dramatic is visible from the street. But that quiet stretch is part of the rhythm too: most of the Sengu’s eight years happen out of sight, in workshops and forests.
Seeing It for Yourself
If this topic draws you in, here are some gentle suggestions for a visit. They are about slowing down more than about planning.
- Look for the empty site. At both Naiku and Geku, notice the plot beside the main sanctuary. Standing there for a minute, knowing what it is for, is one of the most moving experiences I know at Ise.
- Look up at the Uji Bridge torii. Before you cross into Naiku, remember that the wood above you once supported a main sanctuary.
- Visit the Sengu Museum (Sengūkan) at Geku. It shows the craftsmanship of the renewal up close, which makes the idea of “always fresh, never changing” much easier to feel.
- Come back. If you visit once now and once after 2033, you will see tokowaka with your own eyes: the same shrine, completely new.
Grandpa likes to say that Ise is not an old place and not a new place. “It is a place that keeps choosing to be young,” he says. I used to think that was just one of his sayings. Now I think it may be the best one-line summary of the Sengu I have ever heard.
Thanks for reading. I will keep recording each step until 2033.
— Ai
Sources and further reading
Official sources (Jingū Shichō / Jingu Administration):
- 式年遷宮 (Shikinen Sengu) (accessed September 24, 2026)
- 式年遷宮の思想 (The thought behind the Shikinen Sengu) (accessed September 24, 2026)
- 遷宮予定年表 (Schedule of the 63rd Shikinen Sengu) (accessed September 24, 2026)
- 宇治橋・五十鈴川 (Uji Bridge and Isuzu River) (accessed September 24, 2026)
News and local information:
- Nihon Keizai Shimbun, “伊勢神宮の宇治橋鳥居、20年ぶり新調 旧正殿のヒノキ使用” (October 2014)
- Ise Gosengū Committee (伊勢御遷宮委員会), event information at isesengu.jp (accessed September 24, 2026)
Classical texts mentioned:
- Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki (1212)
- Shoku Nihongi (completed 797), source of the term naka-ima
The interpretation of tokowaka, the contrast with Buddhist mujō, and the reading of naka-ima in this article are my own attempts to explain widely discussed ideas. They are not official teachings of Jingu. Where scholars disagree, I have tried to say so.