Motonosumi Shrine & the Ryugu Blowhole: Yamaguchi’s 123 Torii Above the Sea

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123 Torii Between the Cliff and the Sea

On a headland of the Nagato coast, 123 vermilion torii gates pour a hundred meters downhill toward the Sea of Japan — Motonosumi Shrine, founded in 1955 after (the story goes) a white fox appeared to a local fisherman in a dream. CNN’s “Japan’s 31 most beautiful places” list made it briefly world-famous, but its remoteness has protected it: no train reaches within twenty minutes, and the coach crowds of Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari never materialized.

What Locals Do Here (Beyond the Photo)

Japan’s hardest offering box

The shrine’s six-meter grand torii carries its saisen box on top — officially “the most difficult offering box in Japan to hit.” Land a coin and your wish is said to come true; watching a bus group attempt it is its own entertainment.

The Ryugu blowhole

Below the gates, waves compress air through a narrow sea-cliff channel and blast seawater skyward — the “Dragon Palace’s spouting,” reaching thirty meters when winter’s north winds run high. Rough-weather days, counterintuitively, are the spectacular ones. The rocks are slick; keep to the paths.

The squid-fire rice terraces

Fifteen minutes away, the Higashi-Ushirobata terraces stack rice paddies above the same sea — and from May to August, after sunset, the horizon fills with the lights of squid boats while the flooded terraces mirror the dusk. Japanese photographers treat it as a sacred assignment; almost no one else knows it exists.

Base Yourself in Nagato Yumoto

A 30-minute drive inland, the 600-year-old Nagato Yumoto Onsen rebuilt itself around its river — open-air terraces, stepping stones, cafes, and lantern-lit strolls under the concept of an “outdoor paradise.” It is the region’s natural overnight, with the shrine, terraces, and coast forming an easy loop.

Practical Notes

• Access: realistically by car or taxi — about 20 minutes from Nagato-Furuichi Station, 60 from Mine IC; shrine grounds close by late afternoon
• Combine with: Tsunoshima Bridge, 40 minutes west, for the coast’s other icon in one drive
• Photo timing: morning light hits the gates from the sea side
• Manners: the gates are an active shrine approach — walk them, don’t climb them

Fushimi Inari gives you ten thousand gates and ten thousand people. Motonosumi gives you 123 gates, one blowhole, a fleet of night-fishing fires — and, most mornings, nearly nobody.