123 torii on a cliff: the offertory box sits on top of the tallest gate.
One hundred and twenty-three vermilion torii run for more than 100 metres along a cliff on the Sea of Japan, above the cleft in the rock where the waves burst into spray: the ‘breath of the dragon palace’. At the last large torii, facing the sea, the offering box is not set on the ground as at every other shrine: it sits at the top of the gate, and you throw your coin up from below, hoping it goes in. The shrine was founded in 1955, when a local fisherman, Okamura Hitoshi, said he had been visited in a dream by a white fox that asked to be worshipped at that spot on the coast.
The 123 torii were donated one at a time by different worshippers over a decade starting in 1987. The shrine, independent of the national association of Shinto shrines (神社本庁) and privately owned, was called Motonosumi Inari until January 2019, when it was renamed in its current, simpler form after the boom in foreign visitors that followed its inclusion in 2015 among CNN's ‘31 most beautiful places in Japan’.
ℹ️ Visiting hours 9:30–16:30. Paid car park: 300 yen/hour up to a maximum of 500 yen for cars, 100 yen/hour for motorbikes. Address: 〒759-4712 山口県長門市油谷津黄498. About 20 minutes by taxi from JR Nagato-Furuichi Station or the stations next to Higashi-Hagi on the San'in Line, 40 minutes from Nagato-shi Station.
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