A peek of the torii gate at Miyajima Island.

The island is popularly known as Miyajima (me-yah-gee-mah), but the real name is Itsukushima (ee-tsu-kuh-she-mah), which is the same name as the shrine. Until recent times, commoners weren’t allowed on this island. It was considered something of a holy place back in the day. Even after people started living on it, they were forbidden to till the ground, to give birth, or to die on the island. Ok... well, that last might have been a little tough to enforce, but no funerals or burials on the island at any rate. To this day there are no hospitals or cemeteries on the island.

You may recognize the torii gate you see. Then again you might not; it's pretty tiny in the photo. But in reality it is huge and is one of the symbols of Japan. At high tide, the gate appears to be floating on the water—a very cool effect—and incoming boats sail through it.

Unfortunately, the tide was going out when I visited. If you look closely you can see most of the water is already gone. Oh well.

The Photo

The middle of the shot is blurry on purpose. I wanted to make it seem like you are peeking through the hole in the wall at something secret, some kind of mythical, dream-like land; something too far to see clearly but magical enough that you keep looking.

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Copyright © David LaSpina 2018, but almost free to use due to the generous Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Spiffy! More details here.

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Don't miss the other great photos in the Beautiful Japan photo series!

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	David LaSpina is an American photographer lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time. More?