Meiji Shrine Audio Guide: The Power of a Pure Heart

Meiji Shrine sits at the end of one of Tokyo's most iconic avenues, the tree-lined shopping boulevard Omotesando. On this walking tour, you'll trace humanity's long path from survival instinct to shared meaning, using the shrine's forest, rituals, and poetry as touchstones along the way.

The tour starts at the intersection of Omotesando and Meiji-dori, where you'll learn how both street names are linked to the shrine you'll be visiting. On the walk to the main shrine buildings, you will be surrounded by greenery. Just over a century after the first young trees were planted on bare scrubland, the sacred forest at Meiji Shrine now shelters everything from rare microorganisms to a nesting goshawk. What does it take to start from almost nothing and create an entirely self-sustaining forest? As you walk, we'll reflect on how attention, collaboration, and the sharing of knowledge brought us from wandering hunter-gatherers to city dwellers who know what it means to stand at an intersection, choose a path, and move in the direction of a better future.

You'll pass offerings of sake casks and Burgundy wine barrels, pausing to consider how agriculture might have contributed to expressions of gratitude, to prayers to unseen forces, and to disputes over resources. A hand-washing ritual invites you to reset before entering the shrine's main courtyard, where the tour ends under the spreading branches of a magnificent green tree, as old as the shrine itself. Every day, hundreds of wooden tablets bearing wishes for health, love, and forgiveness are hung around its trunk.

On this 35-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Pass through three large cypress torii, among Japan's most impressive shrine gates
• Learn how the Japanese concept of magokoro – pure heart – shapes the shrine's identity and philosophy
• Discover why serious shrine-goers avoid the centre of the path
• Draw an imperial poem at the souvenir shop, a tradition unique to Meiji Shrine
• Observe the shrine's planted yet entirely self-sustaining urban forest ecosystem
• Reflect on the Japanese word omoi – to think about – and how that idea can be expressed in the form of a heart, an eye, and a tree.

By the end of this walking tour, you'll have experienced a delightful philosophical accompaniment to this beloved Tokyo landmark.