Meoto Iwa

About

Meoto Iwa, the Married Couple Rocks, are a religiously significant rock formation in Shinto belief, a particular form of the older Iwakura tradition in which large stones are honoured as the seats of kami. The most renowned pair stands offshore from Futami-ga-ura in Ise, Mie Prefecture, where two stacks rise from the sea before the Futami Okitama Shrine.

In the teaching held here, the rocks embody the union of the creator kami Izanagi and Izanami, and so celebrate the marriage of man and woman, the harmony of household life, and the continuity of family generations. The larger of the two, regarded as male, bears a small torii at its summit. The pair is joined by a great shimenawa woven of rice straw, five strands of forty kilograms each, replaced several times each year in a special rite.

Futami Okitama Shrine itself is dedicated to Sarutahiko Okami and the imperial food goddess Ukanomitama, and its grounds are populated by countless statues of frogs. The site lies near the Grand Shrine of Ise, the most sacred place of purification in Shinto. At dawn in midsummer the sun appears to rise between the two rocks, while Mount Fuji shows on the far horizon.

From Edo-period ukiyo-e woodblocks to the present day, Meoto Iwa has stood as a symbol of marital bliss, safe passage at sea, and the bountiful catch, embodying the wider Shinto concept of duality in which Utsushi-yo and Tokoyo are held together as one.

History

Futami Okitama Shrine, whose grounds face the two rocks, traces its founding to the reign of Emperor Yuryaku in the fifth century and was reorganised in its present form in 1876 following the Meiji separation of Shinto and Buddhism. For some seven hundred years the shimenawa binding the rocks has been rewoven by hand, a rope some thirty-five metres long, replaced three times each year by priests and parishioners working with the tides.

Significance

Within the old Iwakura tradition that reveres great stones as the seats of kami, Meoto Iwa stands as a living witness that the divine dwells in the natural world, and the torii atop the larger rock marks the pair as a threshold between the human and the sacred. Near the summer solstice the sun is said to rise directly between the two rocks at dawn, and the shrine marks the day with the Geshisai, its summer solstice festival.

Architecture

Natural rock formation (Iwakura); no built structure beyond the sacred shimenawa rope and a small torii atop the larger rock