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!