The Story of the Meiji Shrine

At a Glance

Central figures: Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1867 and oversaw Japan’s rapid modernization, and Empress Shoken, known for championing education and social welfare.
Setting: Japan during the Meiji Era (1868-1912) and Tokyo’s Shibuya district, where Meiji Jingu was established after the emperor and empress died.
The turn: Following Emperor Meiji’s death in 1912 and Empress Shoken’s in 1914, the Japanese government resolved to enshrine their spirits in a dedicated Shinto shrine.
The outcome: Meiji Jingu was built in Shibuya, surrounded by a man-made forest of over 100,000 trees from nearly 250 species donated across Japan and the world.
The legacy: The shrine became one of Japan’s most visited Shinto sites, hosting annual spring and autumn festivals, New Year hatsumode visits drawing millions, and memorial rites for the enshrined spirits of the emperor and empress.

Emperor Meiji came to the throne in 1867 with the old order already cracking. The Tokugawa shogunate’s centuries of isolation were ending, and Japan was watching the industrialized West close in from every direction. What followed - the Meiji Restoration - was not a gentle transition. It was a dismantling and a rebuilding, rapid and deliberate: factories, railroads, a conscript army, a modern navy, Western legal codes, and a new system of public education, all assembled within a single generation. The emperor drove these changes, and Empress Shoken moved alongside him, pressing for social welfare reform, for the spread of Western medicine, for the education of women. Together they reshaped the country while keeping its older ceremonial and spiritual structures intact.

When Emperor Meiji died in 1912, Japan had become a different nation. Empress Shoken followed him in 1914. The question of how to honor them was not difficult to answer - in the Shinto tradition, the spirits of the revered dead become kami, divine presences worthy of worship. A shrine would be built. The government chose Shibuya, a district of Tokyo that would eventually become one of the most frenetic urban intersections on earth. Into that future city, they planted a forest.

The Decision to Build

Meiji Jingu did not emerge from a single decree. It was the result of a public and governmental consensus that the emperor and empress deserved a form of memorial that was simultaneously spiritual and civic. Shinto precedent was clear: great figures, especially those of imperial lineage, could be enshrined as kami, their spirits dwelling in a consecrated space where the living could come to pray.

The location in Shibuya was chosen with intention. The site would sit within Tokyo but apart from it - a forested precinct that would hold its own against the growth of the surrounding city. The shrine buildings were constructed and consecrated in 1920, eight years after Emperor Meiji’s death. The main hall and its surrounding structures were built in a classical Shinto architectural style, simple and severe, timber and cypress, designed to last and to age with dignity. The torii gates - great wooden arches marking the boundary between the ordinary world and the sacred space - stood at the approaches, signaling a transition that visitors still feel when they pass beneath them today.

The Forest of 100,000 Trees

The forest is not old growth. Every tree in it was planted. In the 1920s, citizens from across Japan and from Japanese communities overseas donated more than 100,000 trees representing nearly 250 species. Horticulturalists designed the planting with long-range purpose: the forest was meant to become self-sustaining over generations, seeding and regenerating without human intervention. It now covers more than 170 acres.

The decision to plant a managed forest rather than maintain manicured gardens reflects a Shinto sensibility that runs deep. The kami do not reside in ornament. They reside in nature - in old trees, in running water, in stone. By creating a living forest at the shrine’s core, the architects of Meiji Jingu were not just providing pleasant surroundings. They were constructing a dwelling appropriate to the spirits they intended to honor. The forest today, a century after planting, has grown into exactly what the original designers hoped for: dense, layered, full of birdsong, and entirely unexpected in the middle of Tokyo.

Hatsumode and the Festivals

Meiji Jingu draws its largest crowds on the first three days of January. Hatsumode - the first shrine visit of the New Year - is one of the most widely observed Shinto customs in Japan, and Meiji Jingu is among the most popular sites in the country for it. Millions of people pass through in those three days. They come to pray for health, for success in work or studies or relationships, for a good year ahead. The lines stretch back through the forest, quietly, with the particular patience of a winter crowd in a place that asks for stillness.

The Spring Grand Festival, held on April 29, and the Autumn Grand Festival, held on November 3, are the shrine’s principal annual observances in honor of Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. Both dates carried significance during their lifetimes - November 3 was Emperor Meiji’s birthday. The festivals include performances of noh theater, martial arts demonstrations, and bugaku, the ancient tradition of court music and dance that predates even the Meiji Era by many centuries. The pairing is deliberate: here are the old forms, kept alive within a shrine that was itself built to honor the era of change.

Memorial rites are held annually as well - offerings, prayers, and formal expressions of gratitude directed to the enshrined spirits. The priests of Meiji Jingu conduct these with the full ceremonial gravity of the Shinto tradition. The shrine also performs traditional Shinto weddings, where couples stand before the kami of the emperor and empress and seek blessing.

The Shrine in the City

Tokyo grew up around Meiji Jingu and, in some ways, grew against it. Shibuya became famous for its crossing, its department stores, its youth culture, its noise. The shrine absorbed none of this. Step through the torii and the sound changes. The trees are tall enough now to block the skyline. The gravel path is wide and unhurried. Foreign tourists come in large numbers, drawn by the contrast - the largest city in the world pressing up to the edge of a forest clearing where a wooden gate stands in silence.

This coexistence was part of the original vision. Emperor Meiji’s reign had argued, by example, that Japan could absorb foreign technology and foreign ideas without ceasing to be itself - that the country’s spiritual and cultural core was durable enough to survive contact with modernity, even to be strengthened by it. The shrine, standing inside the city it helped build, makes that argument in physical form. The forest grows. The city grows around it. The kami remain.