Kasuga Grand Shrine

Kasuga Grand Shrine is one of Japan's most important Shinto shrines, founded in 768 CE when the Fujiwara clan — the most powerful aristocratic family of the Nara period — established their tutelary shrine here. The approach through the forest, along a path flanked by over 2,000 stone lanterns gradually narrowing and darkening as the trees close in, is one of the defining experiences of Nara.

The shrine's inner buildings are painted in the vivid vermilion typical of Shinto architecture; the contrast with the mossy stone lanterns and ancient cedar forest is startling. Sacred white deer, descendants of the deity Takemikazuchi-no-Mikoto who is said to have arrived on a white deer, are kept in the shrine precincts. The surrounding Kasugayama Primeval Forest, protected by the shrine for over a thousand years, can be explored on walking trails beyond the shrine buildings.

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Every lantern in Kasuga Grand Shrine — there are over 3,000 of them — was donated by a worshipper seeking favour from the shrine's gods. The stone lanterns lining the approach paths are too numerous to count; inside the shrine's covered corridors, bronze lanterns hang from the ceiling in dense rows. Twice a year, at the Setsubun and Obon festivals, all 3,000 lanterns are lit simultaneously — the effect is extraordinary.

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