Gates without walls: torii and the idea of a threshold

A gate is usually part of a wall. The torii of Japan is the strange exception: two posts, two crossbeams, and nothing on either side. You could walk around it. Almost nobody does.

A line you cannot see

Torii mark the entrance to Shinto shrines. Their job is not to defend but to announce: beyond this point the ground is treated differently. People bow before passing through, lower their voices, and often avoid walking straight down the centre of the path. The gate works entirely through agreement. It has power because everyone accepts that it does.

When one gate becomes a thousand

The first two photographs show torii repeated until they become a corridor, like the famous tunnels at Fushimi Inari in Kyoto. At shrines of this kind, gates are commonly donated by people and businesses, and the donor's name is written on the posts. A single threshold turns into a long walk, and the walk itself becomes the experience. The vermilion colour, the rhythm of the posts and the stripes of light between them are what make these tunnels so photographed.

Some shrines stand by the water, and their gates seem to rise straight out of it, as in the third frame. There the threshold is no longer something you step through. It is something you look at, and the crossing happens in the mind.

Other thresholds

The rest of the set widens the idea. A tunnel of woven branches opening to light. The great gate of Liberty Square in Taipei, doubled by its reflection. An old stone bridge disappearing under the forest. None of them are torii, but each does the same thing: it frames a passage and makes you feel the moment of crossing.

I think this is why gates attract photographers. A doorway gives you a ready-made composition, but more importantly it gives the picture a story: there is a this side and a that side. Even in my own work on organisations, the most interesting moments are thresholds, the point where one way of doing things gives way to another.

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Photos: pexels, deltaworks, goumbik, tingyaoh, 8268513 on Pixabay, used under the Pixabay Content License. These are not my photographs.