Photographs │ Tokyo │ Asakusa │ Sensōji: Kaminarimon

Kaminari means ‘thunder’ and mon translates as ‘gate’. It is the main gate through which most visitors enter Sensōji. There are wooden statues of Raijin (the god of thunder), and Fūjin (the god of wind). For this reason, it was originally called the Fūraijinmon, however at some point people started to call it simply the Kaminarimon.

The current gate dates from 1960, when the founder of the company now known widely as Panasonic (the company had different names through its history) gave donations to rebuild it, after the gate had been burnt down in a fire in December 1865.