Ise

Tradition places the founding of the inner shrine in the reign of Emperor Suinin, when the princess Yamatohime is said to have carried the sacred mirror of Amaterasu from the capital and settled it beside the Isuzu River, with the outer shrine of Toyouke, the deity of food and harvest, established later. Whatever its origins, the complex was firmly tied to the imperial house by the 7th century: an unmarried imperial princess, the saio, was sent to serve at a palace at Saiku, west of the city, and the practice of rebuilding the sanctuaries every twenty years is traced to the late 7th century and has been carried out more than sixty times.

For centuries ordinary people were discouraged from approaching. That changed in the medieval and Edo periods, when shrine agents known as oshi travelled the country signing up parishioners and lodging them at Ise. Mass pilgrimages, the okage mairi, swept Japan roughly every sixty years, and in the largest of them millions walked to Ise in a single season, many without their employers' leave. The twin towns that served them — Uji at the inner shrine, Yamada at the outer — grew into a merchant city of inns, theatres and a licensed quarter.

The towns merged as Ujiyamada in 1906, were bombed in 1945, and took the name Ise in 1955. Pilgrimage revived with the railways, and the approach streets were rebuilt in traditional style from the 1970s, with Okage Yokocho opening in 1993. The sanctuaries were last renewed in 2013, the sixty-second rebuilding, with the next due in 2033, and in 2016 the G7 summit was held on the Shima peninsula nearby.

Ise's culture is the culture of pilgrimage. The rebuilding cycle, the shikinen sengu, governs everything: every twenty years the sanctuaries are rebuilt on an adjoining plot to identical plans in untreated hinoki cypress, the deities are moved at night, and the old timbers are distributed to shrines across the country. The practice keeps carpentry, thatching and metalwork skills alive and gives the buildings their look of being both ancient and brand new.

Ritual life is constant rather than occasional, running from the daily offering of food prepared on a sacred fire to the harvest rites of October, the most important of the shrine's year. The white-robed priests, the gravel courts, the plain architecture with its forked finials and the absence of paint or ornament are deliberately austere, and the crowds on the approach street fall silent at the inner gate.

Around this solemnity the city is cheerful and commercial, as pilgrim towns usually are. Sweet shops, sake bars, taiko drumming and puppetry on the approach streets belong to a tradition of pilgrimage as holiday, an old idea captured in the word okage, gratitude. The coast adds its own identity: the ama, women who free-dive for shellfish, still work the shore towards Toba, and the wedded rocks at Futami have become a symbol of marriage across Japan.

About 120,000 people live in Ise, a number that has held fairly steady over recent decades, spread between the flat land around the two shrines, the Kawasaki and station districts, hillside suburbs and the fishing villages of the coast. The city is a regional centre for southern Mie, with the prefecture's hospitals, schools and offices for the surrounding towns.

The shrine is the largest single force in the economy, directly and through the hotels, coach companies, confectioners and souvenir makers that live off the millions of visitors who come each year. Beyond that, the working city has food processing, pearl and seaweed cultivation, fishing out of Futami and the Shima ports, a little light manufacturing, and farms on the plain to the west. Many residents commute north to Tsu or Matsusaka.

Daily rhythms are provincial and early. Shops on the approach streets open for the morning pilgrims and shut in the late afternoon, and locals walk in the shrine forest before work — visiting the sanctuary on the first of the month is a common habit. The pressures are those of the whole region: an ageing population, young people leaving for Nagoya and Osaka, traffic and coach parking around the inner shrine on festival days, and the long-term preparation for a major offshore earthquake, which shapes building rules and the evacuation drills held along the coast.

Ise udon is the city's own dish and divides opinion elsewhere in Japan: thick wheat noodles boiled until very soft, drained, and turned in a little dark, sweet-salty tamari sauce with chopped spring onion, with no broth at all. It was made for pilgrims who arrived hungry and needed something gentle after days of walking, and it is still served in plain shops on both approach roads.

The sea provides the rest. Tekone-zushi, tuna or bonito marinated in soy and laid over vinegared rice, comes from the fishing boats of the southern Shima peninsula; Ise-ebi, the spiny lobster that takes the city's name, is grilled or served raw; oysters and scallops from Ise Bay are cooked on hot plates at the stalls on Oharai-machi; and the bay's seaweed is dried for soups and rice. Matsusaka beef, one of the most prized wagyu, comes from the town up the line and appears in the better restaurants here.

The sweet tradition belongs to the pilgrims. Akafuku, a rice cake wrapped in sweet red bean paste shaped to suggest the ripples of the Isuzu River, has been made on the approach road since the early 18th century and is eaten with green tea in a riverside shop. Other stalls sell rice-flour dumplings, grilled mochi and, in warm weather, shaved ice, and local breweries in southern Mie supply the sake offered at the shrine and drunk in the town.