Miyajima's sacredness was treated as a physical restriction on ordinary human life, with rules about who could be born or die there that lasted long after the shrine's most famous gate was built.
A gate that seems to float
The shrine's large vermilion torii gate, standing offshore in the bay, appears to float on the water at high tide, and its striking placement, framed against the island's forested hillside behind, has made it one of the most photographed single structures in Japan, a symbol distinct from the shrine's own more purely functional stilted construction covered in this entry's companion article.
No births, no deaths allowed
Historically, the island of Miyajima was considered so sacred that neither births nor deaths were permitted to occur there, with pregnant women and the terminally ill traditionally required to leave the island in advance, and burials were not conducted on Miyajima itself, restrictions aimed at preserving the island's ritual purity from what Shinto tradition treats as the strongest sources of impurity.
A restriction that has relaxed
These strict prohibitions have loosened considerably in modern practice as the island has developed a resident population and hospital services, though the historical rule remains a well-documented part of the island's traditional religious character, and some ritual sensitivity around the subject persists locally even after the formal restriction eased.