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Updated: June 2, 2025
The meaning is that each kadomatsu is a milestone on the journey to the Meido; or, in other words, that each New Year's festival signal only the completion of another stage of the ceaseless journey to death. 3 The difference between the shimenawa and shimekazari is that the latter is a strictly decorative straw rope, to which many curious emblems are attached.
But besides the gohei, there are many other things attached to the shimenawa of which you could not imagine the signification. Among these are fern-leaves, bitter oranges, yuzuri-leaves, and little bundles of charcoal. Because the fern-leaf is the symbol of the hope of exuberant posterity: even as it branches and branches so may the happy family increase and multiply through the generations.
Therefore, on every New Year's Day, the leaves of the yuzuriha, mingled with fronds of fern, are attached to the shimenawa which is then suspended before every Izumo home. The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its position and purpose in the composition.
Ordinarily there will be found upon the kamidana nothing but the simple miya containing some ofuda: very, very seldom will a mirror be seen, or gohei except the gohei attached to the small shimenawa either hung just above the kamidana or suspended to the box-like frame in which the miya sometimes is placed.
But the grand displays of the sacred symbol are upon the great festivals of the new year, the accession of Jimmu Tenno to the throne of Japan, and the Emperor's birthday. Then all the miles of streets are festooned with shimenawa thick as ship-cables.
Next observe that, although the shimenawa may be of any thickness, it must be twisted so that the direction of the twist is to the left; for in ancient Japanese philosophy the left is the 'pure' or fortunate side: owing perhaps to the old belief, common among the uneducated of Europe to this day, that the heart lies to the left.
All of bronze it is, with shimenawa of bronze above it, and a brazen tablet inscribed with characters declaring: 'This is the Palace of the Goddess of Enoshima. About the bases of the ponderous pillars are strange designs in relievo, eddyings of waves with tortoises struggling in the flow.
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