Torii

 ( Gates In Japan ) 

Yamabushi, Japanese mountain ascetic hermits with a long tradition as mighty warriors endowed with supernatural powers, sometimes use as their symbol a torii.

The torii is also sometimes used as a symbol of Japan in non-religious contexts. For example, it is the symbol of the Marine Corps Security Force Regiment and the 187th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division and of other US forces in Japan. It is also used as a fixture at the entrance of some Japantown communities, such as Liberdade in São Paulo.

Various tentative etymology of the word torii exist. According to one of them, the name derives from the term pass through and enter.

Another hypothesis takes the name literally: the gate would originally have been some kind of bird perch. This is based on the religious use of bird perches in Asia, such as the Korean sotdae (솟대), which are poles with one or more wooden birds resting on their top. Commonly found in groups at the entrance of villages together with called jangseung, they are amulet which ward off evil spirits and bring the villagers good luck. "Bird perches" similar in form and function to the sotdae exist also in other shamanism cultures in China, Mongolia and Siberia. Although they do not look like torii and serve a different function, these "bird perches" show how birds in several Asian cultures are believed to have magic or spiritual properties, and may therefore help explain the enigmatic literal meaning of the torii's name ("bird perch"). Torii used to be also called roofless gate. The presence of the honorific Mi- or Go- makes it likely that by then their use was already associated with shrines.

Poles believed to have supported wooden bird figures very similar to the sotdae have been found together with wooden birds, and are believed by some historians to have somehow evolved into today's torii. Intriguingly, in both Korea and Japan single poles represent deities ( kami in the case of Japan) and extra=pole is the counter for kami.

In Japan birds have also long had a connection with the dead, this may mean it was born in connection with some prehistorical funerary rite. Ancient Japanese texts like the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki for example mention how Yamato Takeru after his death became a white bird and in that form chose a place for his own burial. For this reason, his mausoleum was then called white bird grave. Many later texts also show some relationship between dead souls and white birds, a link common also in other cultures, shamanic like the Japanese. Bird motifs from the Yayoi period and associating birds with the dead have also been found in several archeological sites. This relationship between birds and death would also explain why, in spite of their name, no visible trace of birds remains in today's torii: birds were symbols of death, which in Shinto brings defilement ( kegare).

Finally, the possibility that torii are a Japanese invention cannot be discounted. The first torii could have evolved already with their present function through the following sequence of events:

• Four posts were placed at the corners of a sacred area and connected with a rope, thus dividing sacred and mundane.
• Two taller posts were then placed at the center of the most auspicious direction, to let the priest in.
• A rope was tied from one post to the other to mark the border between the outside and the inside, the sacred and the mundane. This hypothetical stage corresponds to a type of torii in actual use, the so-called 注連鳥居, an example of which can be seen in front of Ōmiwa Shrine's haiden in Nara (see also the photo in the gallery).
• The rope was replaced by a lintel.
• Because the gate was structurally weak, it was reinforced with a tie-beam, and what is today called 神明鳥居 or two pillar torii (see illustration at right) was born. This theory however does nothing to explain how the gates got their name.

The shinmei torii, whose structure agrees with the historians' reconstruction, consists of just four unbarked and unpainted logs: two vertical pillars (柱) topped by a horizontal lintel (笠木) and kept together by a tie-beam (貫). The pillars may have a slight inward inclination called 内転び or just 転び. Its parts are always straight.

• Torii may be unpainted or painted vermilion and black. The color black is limited to the kasagi and the see illustration. Very rarely torii can be found also in other colors. Kamakura's Kamakura-gū for example has a white and red one.
• The kasagi may be reinforced underneath by a second horizontal lintel called 島木.Iwanami 広辞苑 Japanese dictionary, 6th Edition (2008), DVD version
• Kasagi and the shimaki may have an upward curve called 反り増し.
• The nuki is often held in place by wedges (楔). The kusabi in many cases are purely ornamental.
• At the center of the nuki there may be a supporting strut called 額束, sometimes covered by a tablet carrying the name of the shrine (see photo in the gallery).
• The pillars often rest on a white stone ring called turtle belly or base stone. The stone is sometimes replaced by a decorative black sleeve called root sleeve.
• At the top of the pillars there may be a decorative ring called architrave.
• The gate has a purely symbolic function and therefore there usually are no doors or board fences, but exceptions exist, as for example in the case of Ōmiwa Shrine's triple-arched torii ( miwa torii, see below).

All other torii can be divided in two families, the 神明系 and the 明神系.Other ways of classifying torii exist, based for example on the presence or absence of the shimaki. See for example the site Jinja Chishiki. Torii of the first have only straight parts, the second have both straight and curved parts.

File:Shime torii.svg| Shime torii – just two posts and a shimenawa File:Shinmei torii 2.svg| Shinmei torii File:Geku - Ise torii.svg| Ise torii – a shinmei torii with a kasagi pentagonal in section, a shimaki and kusabi File:Kashima Torii.svg| Kashima torii – a shinmei torii with kusabi and a nuki protruding from the sides File:Kasuga torii.svg| Kasuga torii – a myōjin torii with straight top lintels cut at a square angle File:Hachiman torii.svg| Hachiman torii – a kasuga torii, but the two lintels have a downwards slant. File:Mihashira Torii.svg| Mihashira torii – a triple shinmei torii