Nara - Kasuga Shrine

The Kasuga Shrine, founded by Fujiwara Nagate (714-771), consists of four separate buildings and is dedicated to the divinities Takemikazuchi and Futsunushi and the ancestral gods of the Fujiwara family, Amenokoyane and his consort Hime-okami. The buildings are characteristic examples of the Kasuga-zukuri style, differing from early timber buildings in the red painting of the beams, the white facing of the walls and the curving roofline. Until 1863 the buildings were pulled down every 20 years and re-erected in their original form, as is still the practice at the Ise Shrines; nowadays this process of renewal is confined to the roofs.