A visitor with a smartphone in his hand was walking under the Senbon-torii gate at Nezu Shrine

Although I did not learn this in school, I naturally feel a sense of sacredness when I see a torii gate. This is probably because growing up in Japan, it is imprinted on us from an early age that torii are located in shrines. It is natural for such a person to be excited when he or she comes to a place with multiple rows of torii gates. Whereas at an ordinary shrine, a single torii gate stands alone and appeals to the viewer's sense of sanctity, at the Nezu Jinja Shrine in Nezu, a number of torii gates stand side by side, each appealing to the viewer's sense of sanctity. If I could hear the torii talking, I would consider their sales talk too loud to compete.

However, this feeling is imprinted on me because I have lived in a world where shrines exist since I was a child. I wonder how I would feel if I had grown up in a world without shrines. For example, Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto, with its many torii gates, is popular among foreign tourists, but how does it look to them? Perhaps they simply find it exotic. Suddenly, I remembered that in Bangkok, stores selling Buddha statues often wrote in English, "Buddha statues are not for interior decoration." It is not surprising that even when we see the same symbol, the way we feel about it differs from culture to culture.

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