4 ~ Senkou Inari Jinja

 

Japanese Name: 船光稲荷神社
English Reading: Senkou Inari Jinja
English Translation: Ship Light Inari Shrine
Size: Small
Deity: Inari
Fox Count: 3
First Visit: 14-Feb-2018
Location: Tokyo-Minato
Coordinates: 35.6667854, 139.7171478

A small Inari shrine that I found following a job interview near Aoyama (青山 "Blue Mountain"). In Google, this Shrine is transcribed as "Funeko Inaka Shrine", which certainly is one way of reading those Kanji, but with my experience from travelling around Japan, I believe my above transcription is much more likely. Some shrines explicitly settle that manner by providing a plaque where the shrine's name is also written in Furigana, which are little hiragana characters that explicitly specify the reading. However, I should only realize that later on, and I don't think this little shrine had such a plaque anyways.

Also, little shrines like these sometimes have issues with precise addresses, so I am providing coordinates for shrines where the address is not precise. Japanese addresses are, in fact, quite confounding: Instead of street names with ascending numbers, they divide their districts into blocks known as "Chome", and then number the buildings inside them. For this shrine, Google states the address as "3 Chome-4 Minamiaoyama, Minato City, Tokyo 107-0062", which unfortunately is not a precise address. What a precise address looks like differs in different parts of Japan, but if you look back to my previous posts, you will see that in Tokyo, the "Chome" is followed by two numbers, and not just one.

3 ~ Misaki Inari Jinja

 

Japanese Name: 三崎稲荷神社
English Reading: Misaki Inari Jinja
English Translation: Three Capes Inari Shrine
Size: Medium
Deity: Inari
Fox Count: 2
First Visit: 13-Feb-2018
Location: Tokyo-Chiyoda
Address: 2-chōme-9-12 Misakichō, Chiyoda City, Tōkyō-to 101-0061

An Inari Shrine close to the Kudan Institute, where I spent several weeks bettering my Japanese skills. Located right outside the Suidōbashi (水道橋駅 "Waterway Bridge") station, I could conveniently drop by both before and after classes. Unfortunately the one image I got from the inside turned out a bit blurry.

2 ~ Itoku Inari Jinja

 

Japanese Name: 威徳稲荷神社
English Reading: Itoku Inari Jinja
English Translation: Virtue and Authority Inari Shrine
Size: Side Shrine
Deity: Inari
Fox Count: 12 (+relief)
First Visit: 13-Feb-2018
Location: Tokyo-Shinjuku
Address: 5 Chome-17-5 Shinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo 160-0022 

A very characteristic Inari Shrine that is a side shrine of the large Hanazono Jinja (花園神社 "Flower Garden Shrine") in Shinjuku, and my first shrine featuring a large number of elaborate fox statues, including a mother vixen with her kit. The tunnel of red Torii is generally a very certain sign that there will be foxes at a shrine, for I have only been to very, very few shrines that had a Torii tunnel like that but no foxes. The extra Torii are typically founded by private people or companies to express their gratitude to Inari (I've only seen those rows of Torii at Inari Shrines), and the names of the sponsor and date of construction are written on the sides.

1 ~ Kurofune Inari Jinja

Japanese Name: 黒船稲荷神社
English Reading: Kurofune Inari Jinja
English Translation: Black Ship Inari Shrine
Size: Small
Deity: Inari
Fox Count: 4 (2 outside, 2 inside)
First Visit: 10-Feb-2018
Location: Tokyo-Koto
Address: 1 Chome-12-9 Botan, Koto City, Tokyo 135-0046, Japan

The very first Inari Shrine I found in Japan, and thus a very special one that will always hold a special place in my heart. This one is located in a small back road on a lot that is surrounded by houses on three sides.

And since this is the very first Inari Shrine, let me also give you a bit of exposition on Inari: Inari is the Shinto deity of rice, prosperity and fertility, and one of the most widely venerated deities in all of Japan. In fact, on my travels through Japan I have found significantly more Inari Shrines than shrines dedicated to any other deity, which is also probably owed to the fact that a lot of other shrines feature at least one Inari side shrine. But there's also a good number of small standalone Inari Shrines such as this one.

As for the name "Kurofune" ("Black Ships"), that one might refer to the infamous black ships of the Americans that put an end to the Shakoku period of Japanese isolation in 1868. So maybe this was a spot from which the black ships could be seen back then. Considering that a lot of Koto is reclaimed land, that is not entirely unlikely. In fact, since there are not very many shrines on the reclaimed land, you can trace the former coastline by mapping where the shrines stop.

Exposition

In 2018, I travelled to Japan with the goal of seeing the country in general, and the Inari Shrines that I had read often contained fox statues in particular. I should not be disappointed: There are, indeed, many, many shrines with fox statues (and also a few with live foxes) to be found in Japan, and after a whole year in Japan, I had seen over 600 shrines and temples featuring foxes.

I did originally post a list of those on a forum, but since the availability of that forum is now no longer a given, I am now going to re-post them here in this blog. I am aiming at a rate of one shrine every one or two days, so it should take me a little over 2 years to post them all here, during which you can look forward to frequent updates.

Each shrine is going to contain some pictures, a map of its location, as well as the shrine's name in Japanese and English, size, deity (most will be Inari-Shrines though), date visited, and address (some of those might best guesses though). And naturally, I'll also add the count of foxes for each of those. Also, on some rare occasions, there are also Buddhist temples with foxes. In those cases, I'll mention it in the post. So unless the post says otherwise, every post here is going to be about a Shinto Shrine.

Regarding the size, here's a legend of how I classify them:

• Complex: Palace & Grounds-sized shrine; Huge Shrine consisting of multiple buildings and annexes, possibly many side shrines
• Big: Manor with garden-sized shrine; Shrine covering an area of about 100x100m or more, possibly with several side shrines (3+)
• Medium: Apartment-sized shrine; Shrine of average size, possibly with one or two side shrines
• Small: One-Room Shrine; Little standalone shrine covering an area of less than 10x10 meters, doesn't have side shrines
• Tiny: Miniature Shrine; Shrine that is pretty much just a little altar on a space covering only a few square meters
• Side Shrine: Shrine that is a side shrine of a Medium or larger shrine

And with that, I'm out of exposition. So without any further ado, let us get started with the very first fox shrine!