Kashihara Jingu

This guide to Kashihara Jingu in Nara starts with a Meiji-era calendar scholar in 1872, hunched over the Nihon Shoki, trying to give Japan's mythical first emperor, Jimmu, a real coronation date by counting backward through sixty-year cycles. It follows how that invented date became national ritual, and how petitioners later asked to worship Jimmu near his supposed palace and tomb on Mount Unebi. Walk in past the avenue of ginkgo trees leading toward the torii gate at the entrance.