fence

Gohei--zig-zag strips of white paper attached to a rope, operates as a symbol of the Kami and an offering to the Kami. Divine fences are installed throughout the Shinto shrine to mark the scared soil or spaces for worship. With green bamboo at the corners and ropes with Gohei tied to them, the fence creates a physical representation of the presence of the Kami. Whereas in China, fences or boundary elements usually represent a zone that contains valuable objects that are protected from the tourists in gardens or Buddhist temples. The more protected and fenced off an object is from the tourists, the more precious it is. In a shinto shrine, fences decorated with religious emblems are not necessarily identified with an object of immense value to draw in tourists' attention, they are usually used to attract good spirits (not tourists) to the site and establish boundary for scared space that seems empty yet mysterious. As simplicity was the essence of earlier Shinto shrines in Japan, scared spaces are marked by basic materials-- unpainted wood and rope. It appears that the survival mechanism for the Shinto shrine is the unseen and the impenetrable. In contrast, fences in Buddhist temples or other tourist sites are heavily constructed, usually in steel, to provide maximum protection, and also to indicate the significance of the object or view displayed.