Shrine Shinto affirms worship centred on the public shrine (jinja), the dwelling-place of the kami, the gods, spirits, and sacred powers of Shinto. At the shrine, set apart by the torii gate and by rites of purification, priests offer prayers, food, and ceremony to the kami on behalf of the community, and worshippers visit to give thanks, make requests, and mark the festivals and seasons. This shrine-based worship, tied to particular places and their guardian deities, is the mainstream form of Shinto practised across Japan.
The great majority of Japan's shrines, estimated at around eighty thousand, are today affiliated with the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho), a private religious organisation founded in 1946 after the Allied occupation's Shinto Directive of December 1945 formally separated religion from the Japanese state and dismantled State Shinto.
The Association regards Ise Grand Shrine, dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu and periodically rebuilt every twenty years in a rite called shikinen sengu, as the spiritual centre of shrine Shinto, though the Association itself has no formal doctrinal authority over individual shrines, most of which retain considerable local autonomy in ritual practice and precedence.