Rakurakuura Shrine Itsukushima Shrine

 

Floating Torii are the torii gates placed in water marking the approach to a shrine from the water. They are found in lakes and the sea and are not uncommon, with the most famous, and also the biggest, being the one in front of Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima in Hiroshima.

One of my favorites is another quite well known onem at Shirahige Shrine on Lake Biwa, known for its sunsrises.

This one is located in an inlet off the Maruyama River across from Kinosaki Onsen in northern Hyogo.

I think it may have originally been called Ukishima Benten and been a small Benzaiten shrine.

Benzaiten was conflated with the goddess of Itsukushima Shrine, one of the three Munakata kami.

It looks like this island was "rebuilt" at the same time as the land next to it when a large old people home was built and that was when the torii was built and probably when it was renamed.

The previous post in this series on the sights of Toyooka was on the amazing geology of the nearby Genbudo Caves.