360 CRYSTAL ~ Fushimi Inari Taisha

 

Japanese Name: 伏見稲荷大社
Romanized Reading: Fushimi Inari Taisha
English Translation: Prostrated Hopes Inari Grand Shrine
Size: Complex
Deity: Inari
Fox Count: 7
First Visit: 25-Dec-2018
Location: Kyoto-Fushimi
Address: 68 Fukakusa Yabunouchichō, Fushimi-ku, Kyōto-shi, Kyōto-fu 612-0882
Coordinates: 34.96715,135.77317

This is it! The Great One (巨稲荷一)! This is where Inari worship began in Japan and spread all over the land, and with it, the foxes. This is an iconic pilgrimage site, and one of the major attractions of Kyoto, to the point that not one but two nearby train stations are named after it (Inari and Fushimi Inari). The Inari station of the JR Nara Line is the closer one, depositing you right outside of the 200m approach to the shrine, with a large black (probably metal) fox right across the road.

The main shrine is then flanked by two pairs of large black metal foxes. The right one of the outside pair is explicitly male, which makes this the first pair in a long time where the gender of the foxes is explicitly or implicitly defined. In fact, the last one was Kikuya Inari Jinja in Nagano. This brings the vixen side count to 10:33, which is interesting, because you'd think that most shrines would follow the way that Fushimi Inari Taisha has it, with the male on the right and the female on the left. But clearly, most have it the other way around.

This shrine does not only cover an areal, it covers an entire mountain. And while I'm not sure about the exact distribution of property, the area that feels like it belongs to this shrine is roughly 80 hectares in size.

One of the most iconic parts of this shrine are the Torii tunnels. Plural, because there's a lot of them. And not just a lot lot, but a LOT lot. They're literally all over the mountain, coming in sizes from "Small enough to put in front of a tiny shrine" over "just the right size to comfortably walk through unless you're really tall" and going all the way to "mega-freaking HUGE".

Anyway, I already told you to buckle up for Kyoto, and I'll have to tell you to buckle up again because of the sheer number of vulpine side shrines featured at this shrine, which is so large that I couldn't even visit them all in just a single day! I think we might be able to finish them all this year, but they're well over a hundred, so there'll be an entire two Bonus Chapters included in all of that. So get ready for the biggest concentration of fox shrines in all of Japan!