A Japanese Torii Gate survived the bombing of Nagasaki

Torii are traditional Japanese gates, usually serving as an entrance to a Shinto shrine. Shinto is the largest religion in modern Japan. For much of Japanese history, its practices were intertwined with those of Buddhism, many Japanese being adherents of both religions. Shinto focuses on the worship of Kami, spirit like entities, both at public shrines, festivals and in private homes. During the Meiji Period (1868-1912) the Japanese government began to exert significant influence over the religion, putting special emphasis on the emperor as a divine being to be worshipped, suppressing the usage of Shinto shrines for non-state functions and implementing state funding policies which ensured that Shinto shrines favourable towards the government and Emperor would come to dominate the religion. This transmuted Shinto into what many scholars have argued to be an almost secular, nationalistic state ideology, retroactively labelled as State Shinto. In the last decades of Imperial Japan, Torii gates were forbidden to serve as entrance to any Shinto Shrines except for those which were government funded. The Hachiman Torii gate seen in this image miraculously survived the bombing of Nagasaki on the 9th of August 1945. While State Shinto was banned by the Allies during the US occupation, regular Shinto was protected by the American belief in freedom of religion. To what extent modern Shinto still includes elements of State Shinto remains subject of academic dispute and international controversy. (Josef Mlejnek)