Inari

Who is Inari?

Inari (稲荷) is the kami of rice and the harvest, and one of the most widely worshipped deities in Japan. From that farming root Inari's blessings spread over the centuries to cover almost every kind of worldly good: business success, household safety, safe travel and even skill in the performing arts. The head shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, says there are around 30,000 Inari shrines across Japan. Counting the countless small shrines on rooftops, in gardens and beside shops would raise that number much higher.

Inari is not a yokai. But no yokai encyclopedia can leave Inari out, because Inari's messenger is the fox, the kitsune, the most famous shapeshifter in Japanese folklore. The two are so closely linked in the popular mind that many people believe Inari is a fox. Fushimi Inari Taisha says clearly that this is not so: the foxes are Inari's messengers, not the deity itself.

Japanese dictionaries usually explain the name as a worn-down form of inanari, "rice growing." The characters used to write it mean "rice" and "carrying," as if the deity bore a load of rice on its back.

The deities behind the name

"Inari" is less a single figure than a name for a group of kami worshipped together. At Fushimi Inari Taisha the main hall enshrines five: Ukanomitama no Ōkami in the central seat, with Satahiko no Ōkami, Ōmiyanome no Ōkami, Tanaka no Ōkami and Shino Ōkami. Together they are called Inari Ōkami. The shrine says the five names reflect different virtues of a single great deity.

The most important is Ukanomitama, whose name means something like "the spirit of the rice." The Kokugakuin University Encyclopedia of Shinto describes Ukanomitama as a kami of foodstuffs, understood as the spirit of rice, and notes that this is the kami most commonly meant by "Inari." The Kojiki makes this kami a child of the storm god Susanoo, while the Nihon shoki gives Izanagi and Izanami as parents.

Inari has also been pictured in very different ways. One well-known image shows Inari as an old man carrying rice, who promises the monk Kūkai to protect the temple of Tōji in Kyoto. Buddhist traditions identified Inari with Dakiniten, a figure who rides a white fox. Because of these overlapping images, Inari has no single fixed appearance.

Origins: the arrow and the rice cake

Fushimi Inari Taisha dates the enshrinement of Inari Ōkami to the first Day of the Horse in the second month of 711, when the kami came to rest on the three peaks of Mount Inari. The shrine itself says that worship of the mountain may be older still. Mount Inari, 233 metres high, is the southernmost of the 36 peaks of Kyoto's Higashiyama hills. It was revered as a kannabi, a natural dwelling place of a deity, and the whole mountain is still treated as part of the shrine.

The founding legend is preserved in surviving fragments of the Yamashiro fudoki, an early provincial record. It concerns Hata no Irogu, a member of the Hata clan. According to the story, Irogu used a rice cake as a target for his arrows. The rice cake turned into a white bird and flew to the peak of the mountain, and where it landed, rice sprang up. The name Inari is tied to this miracle. Japanese reference works name the Hata clan as the founders of the shrine.

Inari rose quickly in court favour. The shrine records that in 827, trees from Mount Inari were cut to build Tōji, the deity's anger was blamed for the trouble that followed, and the court gave Inari an official rank to make amends. By 942 Inari had been granted the highest rank a kami could hold. In 1468, during the Ōnin War, the shrine buildings burned, and they were rebuilt in 1499.

From rice to riches

As Japan's towns grew, Inari moved with the people. The Encyclopedia of Shinto explains that in commercial areas Inari was believed to bring business prosperity, while in fishing villages Inari became a kami of the catch. In eastern Japan especially, Inari was widely worshipped as a household or estate deity, a yashikigami, enshrined in the grounds of private homes. The flexibility of the cult, able to take on whatever a community most needed, is a large part of why there are so many Inari shrines today.

Inari also has a strong Buddhist side. Japanese dictionaries note that after the capital moved to Kyoto, Inari became bound up with esoteric Buddhism, and Dakiniten came to be regarded as Inari's true form. The best-known result is Toyokawa Inari in Aichi Prefecture. Despite its name, it is a Zen temple of the Sōtō school, Myōgonji, founded in 1441. The temple explains that it is popularly called "Inari" because its guardian deity, Toyokawa Dakini Shinten, is shown carrying rice sheaves and riding a white fox.

Why the fox?

The Encyclopedia of Shinto traces several threads that tied foxes to Inari. In farming villages it was believed that the mountain kami came down to the rice paddies in spring guided by a fox. Places where the kami was welcomed were sometimes called "fox mounds." And there was a pun: one of the food deities linked with Inari, Miketsu-no-kami, could be written with characters meaning "three fox gods." Fox spirits were also connected with oracles and with shrine mediums.

Fushimi Inari Taisha calls Inari's fox messengers byakko-san, "white foxes," and stresses that they are invisible. The stone foxes that guard Inari shrines are images of these messengers. This is also why Inari's favourite food is said to be the fox's favourite: Japanese dictionaries explain that fried tofu, aburaage, was thought to be loved by foxes and offered at Inari shrines. Rice wrapped in fried tofu is still called inarizushi. For more on fox lore, see our article on the kitsune.

The torii of Fushimi Inari

The image that has made Fushimi Inari famous worldwide is its tunnels of vermilion torii gates, climbing the mountain paths in rows so tight they seem to form corridors. The best-known stretch is called Senbon Torii, "a thousand torii." According to the shrine, giving a torii became a common offering by the Edo period, as a way of asking that a prayer be heard or giving thanks once it had been. There are now around 10,000 torii of every size on the mountain.

The shrine's great festival day is still the first Day of the Horse in February, Hatsuuma, remembered as the day Inari first came to the mountain. On that day worshippers make the fuku-mairi, a "visit for good fortune," up the slopes.