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Futamigaura in Ise City, Mie Prefecture, used to be a place for a water cleansing ritual for the visitors to Ise Shrine.

A beautiful coastline with large and small rocks as well as white sand, situated at the mouth of the Isuzu River, is known as Futamigaura.  The Ise River flows into Ise Bay via the ground of the Naiku of Ise Jingu Shrine, so in the Edo Period, the worshippers to the shrine used to use the river water here for purification before visiting the shrine.  In 1881, thereafter, this beautiful coast was designated as Japan’s first official swimming beach and it’s said that the Emperor Taisho, a great-grandfather of the present emperor Naruhito, swam here when he was a boy.  Sea bathing was for medical purposes at that time, hence most lodging facilities here were equipped with a big public bathtub filled with hot sea water. The guests having physical disease alternately soaked in cold sea water and hot sea water to be cured.  The first photo shows Hinjitsu-kan ryokan, Japanese hotel, built in 1887.  This originally was just for the Imperial family and VIPs, but is now used for rental conference rooms as an important cultural property.

The second one is Meoto-iwa Wedded Rocks, which has been widely known since the Edo Period because it was described in an ukiyo-e woodblock print by Utagawa Toyokuni in the first half of the 19th century.





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