he Inner Shrine was founded is uncertain. But the legend held that Amaterasu herself selected the site and conveyed her wishes "in an apparition to Princess Yamato early in the first century AD" (Stanley-Baker 28). What is known, however, is that the forms of the buildings at Ise derive from the earliest forms of Japanese architecture just as the site and its purposes derive from the fundamental and very ancient practice of Shinto.
The two principal compounds are divided into eastern and western sectors. When one is in use, the other is covered only by a layer of clean-washed white pebbles and projecting location of the groundpost around which the principal building will be reconstructed in time. The compounds are rectilinear and are enclosed by four layered wooden fences. There are thatched and gabled gates set in the southern side of the fences. Inside the compound are the three principal buildings, the two treasure houses and the Shoden, or main sanctuary. A meeting hall for the priests is located within the first set of fences outside the central compound. The Shoden and all but the outermost gate are aligned on a perfect north-south axis. The gate in the first fence is placed off the axis because Japanese carpenters believe "a deliberate imperfection like an off-center gate" avoids the error of "flaunt[ing] a perfection appropriate only to the handiwork of the spirits" (Drexler 27). It is these buildings and fences that are reconstructed every twenty years for the Inner Shrine, the Outer Shrine, and several of the other principal sanctuaries. The structures reflect an ancient style of building and the setting with "the natural colours and textures of the wood and pebbles" create an atmosphere "of intimacy and awe" appropriate to Shinto worship (Stanley-Baker 29).
Shinto is "essentially an indigenous religion with neither dogma, scriptures nor form" (Stanley-Baker 27). Though Shinto developed forms of ritual, cle...