Moving Day
The chief of the sacred treasures of Japan is the mirror which contains the spirit of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, ancestress of H. I. M. The Emperor of Japan. Of such superlative sanctity is Amaterasu's mirror that for centuries no human eye has ever actually seen it. Rumored to be a round plate of polished metal, it rests in an elaborate tabernacle, shrouded in a cover of white brocade. When the brocade wears out a new cover is slipped over the old--no priest would dare peek.
The mirror's home is a simple wooden temple expressive of primitive simplicity in the sacred groves of Ise, 18 miles from Tokyo. Strict ritualistic cleanliness decrees that every 20 years the mirror shrine must be destroyed, the sacred mirror moved to another shrine, an exact replica, beam for beam, bolt for bolt of the one vacated. Last week, the mirror moved.
Though the new straw-thatched building to which the sacred mirror moved last week is only 37 by 18 ft., and of the most primitive design, it has taken nine years to build, has cost the Imperial Government nearly $5,000,000.
In 1920, Shinto priests went to the mountains, selected a grove of hinoki trees, a variety of cedar. The following spring lumbermen in spotless white jackets, chosen for their piety and good character, felled the trees, floated them down the river to Yamada. For nine years every step of the construction from the seasoning of the lumber, the hewing of the beams to the final sweeping of the completed temple followed the fixed unvarying ritual. Every workman, from the humblest coolie to the supervising priest, had to bathe and pray daily, wear a spotless white jacket and shirt each morning.
Eight o'clock on the evening of Moving Day found 300,000 pilgrims gathered under the red-leaved maples of the sacred grove. A slender bamboo fence surrounded both old temple and new. Guards in medieval armor were stationed along the line with fire torches flaring against the evening sky. Another fence inside the old temple surrounded the mirror. Just outside this fence stood grizzled Yuko Hamaguchi, Prime Minister of Japan, his Cabinet and members of the official party. Inside the fence in the temple stood Prince Kuni, Imperial Messenger, and the High Priest with his assistants. The High Priest read an address to the spirit of Amaterasu O-Mikami, informing her that her new home was ready. Then the procession formed to march the 350 yards from the old temple to the new. First came more torch bearers in archaic costumes, then warriors with bows, spears, shields, others with gifts of jewels and robes for the Sun Goddess. Then came the Sacred Mirror herself, her tabernacle close curtained, borne on the shoulders of white-robed priests. Humbly at the tail of the procession, blinking in the acrid smoke of the pine torches, walked the Prime Minister of Japan and his Ministers.