Inari Shrine at Kobo-ji, Hagi

Tucked away in the corner of the grounds of Kobo-ji temple in Hagi is a small Inari Shrine.

The temple is named after Kobo Daishi who legend says visited the nearby hot spring on his return from China.

At first I thought it must have been Dakiniten, the buddhist element/manifestation of Inari because of the distinctly buddhist windows,...

But a peek inside revealed a distinctly shinto Zuijin behind the taiko that has seen better days...

Akiyoshi Inari

This is one of the most aesthetically pleasing and also unusual torii that I can remember seeing.

It is at the entrance to Akiyoshi Inari Shrine in Mine City, Yamaguchi Prefecture.



It was a very atmospheric shrine located in the forest. Unfortunately there was no signboard and nothing written about it on the net so not much to say.....

Kawamoto Kagura Competition 2012

Last weekend I went upriver to the Kawamoto Kagura Competition. While I believe that kagura is best appreciated in a shrine, kagura competitions do offer another type of experience.... comfortable seats, good lighting, and a big stage which is more suited for the Hiroshima style of kagura.. Even though it was a secular event, the first dance is always the purification of the space, performed here by a group from Mitani.

Next up was the local Kawamoto group and they performed Akoden, a variation on the wicked fox transformed into a beautiful maiden. Though Kawamoto is in Iwami their group performs Horoshima style, with lots of mask changes etc. This was a rousing dance for the home audience with plenty of stand-up comedy, pantomime, and slapstick....

The Otsuka group from Kitahiroshima then did Rashomon, a dance I dont think Ive seen before that is actually the prequel to the more common Oeyama dance. Fast, furious, but ending with the demons escaping and so setting the scene for Oeyama...

Next up was the simpler 2 man version of Hachiman performed by the Mihara group. Mihara is a little up in the mountains near my village and Yoko works there. She is friends with Mr. Yamaguchi the group leader who dances the Hachiman part. At 70 years of age Mr Yamaguchi is certainly one of the oldest kagura dancers around..... though still spry and athletic.

My own village of Tanijyugo was up next with Jinrin,.... 2 heroes and 2 demons...

There were six more dances after the lunchbreak but I only stayed for one more, Momijigari, another Hiroshima favorite with many mask changes and 4 maidens who transform into demons.....

Kagura competitions have grown in poularity in the past 50 years and do offer the opportunity to see a lot of kagura in an all-day setting rather than the more intimate shrine setting of all-night kagura..... Most towns in Iwami and north Hiroshima now have annual kagura competions. The smaller towns without auditoriums will put them on in school gymnasiums....

Toyonaka Inari at Taineiji

Taineiji is an old Zen temple in the mountains a little south of Nagato on the north Yamaguchi coast. We drove past the temple but stopped just after when we saw a vermillion bridge crossing the stream and decided to explore...

What we found was a branch temple of Toyonaka Inari, the second of the three great Inari Shrines of Japan, though in reality a temple up in Aichi. The branch temple was established here at Taineiji about 50 years ago,

It enshrines Dakiniten, a "buddhist" correlate of Inari, though it is unclear how much Inari is in Dakiniten or how much Dakiniten is in Inari. Originally a Hindu goddess Dakini became associated with the fox and she is often depicted riding a white fox.

Dakiniten was a powerful deity during the medieval period and this seems to be when the associations with kitsune grew.

Spent a long time chatting with one of the monks at the temple. He had spent a year at a monastery in Ireland and bemoaned the fact that while in Ireland he was treated with respect as a priest but that in japan he received much less respect.

Children's Inari Shrine

The 4th shrine I visited on my walk around Matsue was yet another Inari Shrine, knowns as the Children's Inari. It is well known mainly due to the writings of Lafcadio Hearn.

It was built by the Lord of Matsue as a subsidiary shrine of the Jozan Inari within the nearby castle grounds and he named it Komori Shrine which means child guardian.

In Hearns day mothers would come here to ask for help with their children that refused to take baths or have their heads shaved.

Nowadays those two problems are rare but parents leave prayers for any kind of problems they are having with their children, most often illness.

There is a smaller Inari shrine just behind the main building. There are many Inaris. According to the signboard at the shrine the main kami is listed as Uganomitama, the female as opposed to the more usual male Ukanomiama.

Kitsune of Saijo Inari

Kitsune, foxes, are the messengers of the kami Inari, so statues of them can be found at all Inari shrines and temples. Like Komainu, there are a variety of different designs and styles.
All of these photos are from Saijo Inari in Okayama.

Most kitsune statues are carved in stone, but here there were many large ones of clay. I believe they are known as Bizen style.

There were a pair of strange looking ones made of concrete!!

Often the kitsune will have a scroll in its mouth. The scroll contains wisdom.

Occasionally there will also be komainu as well as kitsune.

Small ceramic kitsune are left as offerings, along with sake (omiki)

Tosa Inari Shrine

Tosa Inari Shrine is jammed in between buildings on a side street off of Kawaramachi Dori in downtown Kyoto.

The shrine was originally built in 1348 on the bank of the Kamo river a little east of its present site.

It was moved here in the Edo Period and renamed Tosa Inari as the surrounding area was the Kyoto headquarters of the Tosa Domain, the former Shikoku Domain nowadays most well known as being the home of Ryouma Sakamoto, star of the most recent NHK taiga drama.

Sakamoto was assasinated not far from here, and amost certainly he prayed at this shrine.

Inari Shrine, Kiyomizudera

Kiyomizudera, like most religious sites in traditional Japan, worshipped buddhas and kami, they were shrine-temple complexes, so its not unusual to find shrines in the grounds of a temple. Kiyomizudera has an Inari shrine.

Of course, wherever you find an Inari shrine you find foxes, the messengers of Inari.

All the kitsune (foxes) at Kiyomizudera wore vermillion scarves on their heads.

Officially, by government decree, Inari is now equated with Ukanomitama, an offspring of Susano and connected with food. The head shrine of Inari is the famous Fushimi Inari near Kyoto founded by the powerful immigrant clan the Hata. Inari shrines are the most common shrines in all of Japan and its identity has many facets, including Dakini, a buddhist deity with Hindu and Tantric roots.

Soja Shrine

Part of the fascination for me in visiting shrines around Japan is to discover the differences and varieties. Architecture, layout, styles of shimenawa and statuary all vary by region, and the first thing I noticed about the larger shrines in southern Okayama is that they all have covered entranceways.

Soja shrine in Soja City gave its name to the town. "Soja" roughly translated means "all the kami shrines", and when the shrine was founded towards the end of the Heian Period the town changed its name from Hachiba to Soja.

Enshrined here are 324 kami!!!! Apparently the local bigwig found it rather tiresome to have to travel around and visit all the shrines in his jurisdiction every year so he gathered them all together in one place, hence the name Soja Shrine.

The two main kami enshrined here are Onamuchi, which is one of names Okuninushi goes by, and one of his wives, Suserihime, a daughter of Susano.

This area of Okayama, formerly the province of Bitchu, still continues a tradition of kagura, so in front of the main shrine were a lot of fine, wooden masks. The mask in the middle with the snot pouring from his nose is apparently Inasehagi!

A very partial list of some of the other 324 kami enshrined here is

Tenjin
Inari
Numata Sha
Ebisu
Gion Sha (Susano and family)
Ikegami
Kinoyama
Okami
Itsukushima
Kotohira (Konpira)
Various Aragami

The entrance to the shrine is right next to the Soja Local History Museum, not far from Soja Station. Soja is a good place to start or end a trip on the Kibi Bike Path.

What big ears you have!

Pairs of fox (kitsune) statues are common throughout Japan, as they are the guardians of Inari shrines. There is a massive diversity of styles and designs, and I have seen some pretty strange ones, but never any with ears like this!

They are at a small Inari shrine within the grounds of a temple in Takahashi, Okayama.