ABSTRACT
In the Spring of 2000, preparations for a festival at Izumo Grand Shrine, the oldest shrine in Japan, accidentally unearthed a pillar estimated to be nearly 800 years old. It was an immense three meters (nearly ten feet) in diameter, composed of a trio of fat cedar logs banded together with steel, buried at the point where today worshippers enter the innermost precincts of the Grand Shrine. Shortly afterwards, two similarly bundled shafts were found nearby. For years, scholars have debated the existence of a vermillion lacquered shrine said to be an improbable 48 meters tall (157 feet), known only through a single drawing from the Heian period (794-1185).2 The placement and arrangement of these wooden fragments demonstrated conclusively the towering shrine truly existed. The unprepossessing timber lumps were displayed shortly after, in the early days of May in the same year; over 2500 people lined up before the exhibition opened, and in a few days nearly twenty thousand people viewed the artifacts.3
