Discover Meiji Shrine!
- Guided Tours: Explore the shrine with experienced guides.
- Cultural Workshops: Engage in traditional crafts and practices.
- Nature Walks: Discover the serene beauty of the surrounding forest.
- Meditation Sessions: Find peace amidst nature through guided meditation.
Step off the frantic youth-fashion streets of Harajuku, pass beneath a huge cypress torii, and within a few paces the city simply falls silent. Meiji Shrine sits inside a hundred-acre forest of a hundred thousand trees — and the astonishing thing is that this ancient-feeling woodland was planted entirely by hand just a century ago. It is Tokyo’s most important Shintō shrine, and the most complete escape from the city to be found anywhere near its centre.
Guides and information on site
The shrine grounds are free and open, with multilingual signboards explaining the etiquette of worship and the history of the forest, and free leaflets are usually available near the main entrance. There is no official handheld audio guide, so to go deeper — the meaning of the rituals, the symbolism of the architecture — a guided walking tour or an audio-guide app downloaded beforehand is the practical route. The one ticketed part, the Inner Garden, provides its own small map at the gate. Allow an unhurried hour to walk in, visit the shrine, and walk back out.
A little background
The shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji, under whose reign (1868–1912) Japan transformed itself from a closed feudal society into a modern world power, and to his consort, Empress Shōken. After the emperor’s death, citizens donated some 100,000 trees from every corner of Japan, and volunteers planted them to create the forest you walk through today — designed to mature, over centuries, into self-sustaining native woodland. The original shrine of 1920 was destroyed in the war and rebuilt in 1958.
It remains a living place of worship. You may well see a traditional Shintō wedding procession crossing the courtyard, the bride under a white hood, priests and family in formal dress — not staged for visitors, but the shrine doing exactly what it is for.
What to see
The approach and torii. The long gravelled paths through the forest are the heart of the experience — cool, hushed, the traffic forgotten. Near one of the great gates stands a celebrated wall of sake barrels, offerings to the enshrined spirits, with a corresponding rack of wine barrels from France opposite, a nod to Meiji’s opening to the West.
The main shrine buildings. A serene complex of courtyards and cypress-wood halls. Here you can make an offering, bow, and write a wish on an ema (a small wooden plaque) to hang among thousands of others, or tie up a paper fortune.
The Inner Garden (Gyoen). A quiet landscaped garden the emperor designed for his empress, with a famous iris field that blooms spectacularly in June and a peaceful well, Kiyomasa’s Well, regarded by many as a power spot. This part carries a small admission fee.
It remains a living place of worship. You may well see a traditional Shintō wedding procession crossing the courtyard, the bride under a white hood, priests and family in formal dress — not staged for visitors, but the shrine doing exactly what it is for.
Cost and hours
Entry to the shrine is free. It opens and closes with the sun — roughly dawn to dusk, with the exact hours posted monthly at the gates — so there is no fixed timetable, which is part of its character. The Inner Garden costs ¥500, and the Treasure Museum a little more. The shrine sits between Harajuku Station (JR Yamanote line) and Meiji-jingūmae Station — the contrast between the two, sacred forest and teenage fashion mecca a hundred metres apart, is one of Tokyo’s best.
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