Fushimi-Inari Shrine, Kyoto

Hello Everyone,

So this particular post is about my trip to Fushimi-Inari Shrine and a little bit about Fushimi-Inari and Shinto religion in General.

My interest in this particular shrine started in my Shinto class that I am taking while I am here in Japan. Shinto is the oldest Japanese religion on record, it is purely Japanese. Contrary to many religions I have studied in America, Japanese religions are tangible, touchable, and solid in the sense that you can go out and see them, touch them and be involved with without the need for an expensive pilgrimage. For example, in class, we had a reading that compared and contrasted two major Inari shrines. The first was Fushimi-Inari, the place where Inari worship first occured around the 8th century. Fushimi-Inari is a half hour train ride away. The second actually happens to be a Zen-Buddhist temple where the image and worship of Inari happened to become inbedded. Inari is a purely Shinto god- the god of rice, the most important crop in Japan.






Inari is one of the most important gods in Shinto, and because of his prevelance in Japan and the nation's shift in economic income sources, Inari also transformed from the god of rice, to the god of business success. The two are obviously correlated, but the rice crop is no longer the foundation the economy in Japan. This is something very interesting about the Shinto religion. It is a very personal religion with absolutely no written doctrine, no head of the religion, so the gods and the practices change and adapt to the needs of each individual, within certain bounds. There are Shinto Priests, who all must have the equivilence of a master's degree, and they do attempt to retain certain key aspects of the religion. However, Shamanism, spirit channeling, also occurs very frequently in the religion. The shamans do not answer to the preists, and often go against what the priests say. However, people tend to listen to both the Priests and the Shaman, causing even more molding and melting of ideals within the religion. Shinto is complex, and my blog would get very long if I explained more. So I will stop at this! (I'll be writing a paper on some comparative facets of the religion later, so if you are really curious, you can read that).




This trip to Fushimi-Inari began around the family Kotatsu after dinner on a Friday night. My host family asked me to make a list of things I would like to do while in Japan, and I made a list of the things that are nearby (I don't exactly want my family having to plan a major trip at their expense) I put Fushimi-Inari on the list because I had read about it the night before. (I don't know if it is possible to convey the feeling of reading about something monumental and realizing that you can just go and see it. You can just walk outside and go see it! America is such a young country with new history) Anyways, the decision was made to go to Fushimi-Inari.

The next morning my Okasan asked if it would be alright if my two 'nephews', Shiyo (6) and Jin (3), came along as well. Of course I was thrilled, I had originally wanted small children in my family, though I am now glad I do not have any. These, however, were my parent's grandchildren, so, just like in America, they borrow them sometimes! So after driving to their Daughters and picking the two oldest up, we headed off to Fushimi-Inari, about an hour and a half away. Neither of the two smaller children had been, though neither of them were into the historical or religious aspect of it, obviously. The car ride was awkward at first. I would be nervous if I was a small Japanese child shoved into the backseat with a big, white American. However, the mood lightened when the boys pulled out their pokemon cards and we started discussing them with one another. They told me the Japanese names of the ones I could not read, and I told them what they were in America. I also learned how to play rock, paper, scissors in Japanese, and I taught them how to play "I spy". Since my vocabulary is small, we stuck with saying we saw a certain color instead of specific objects. Every time I said I spied something gold, the boys would guess my hair was what I was referring to- too cute.

Finally arriving at Fushimi, I was overwhelmed once more by the pure Japanese-ness of this site. I knew Fushimi was a mountain, and as I got closer I realized that the entire mountain was the shrine. The main building was at the foot of the mountain, where the majority of the tourists first came to. Unlike the Buddhist TEMPLE I wrote about before, Shinto SHRINES are drenched in the color orange- a symbol of luck, long life, and all good things in general. At this particular Shrine, you also see a lot of red, a calling card for Inari, the rice god. For someone who hasn't studied Shinto at all, one would also assume that Inari is a fox because there are nearly close to half a million fox statues all over the grounds. Interestingly enough, many Japanese Inari worshipers also think Inari is a fox. However, Inari is not a fox, the fox is another calling card, the messenger of Inari, and also a symbol of malice. People who are ill or who are seeing foxes are said to have an angered fox spirit shadowing them. The cure, you ask? Worshiping Inari, of course.








The Shinto preists were all performing priestly duties while I was there, singing, chanting and reading prayers to the gods and Inari. They were all behind chicken wire cages in the temples, however, and there was no separate worship service going on. This is the norm for a shrine. Though I was fascinated with the detached-ness of the priests, an eerie wailing song drew my attention away. Behind me, on another 'stage' in another temple building, the temple Mikos were offering up a song of praise to inari while beating massive drums and plucking on what looked like harps laying on their sides. The song is called Garaku, I am told, and I can't find it anywhere and I was so mystified by it that I forgot to record it (though video recording wasn't allowed). It was eerie and beautiful. The Miko are young priestesses. They are women who are drawn to the Shinto way and must perform certain ritual dances, songs, etc. The Miko must retire from all Miko work the day they turn 25. Interesting.







After checking out the main part of the temple, I asked where the infamous Tori were. You all have probably seen pictures or heard of the tori. They are those orange archways in aligned into a pathway. Those are from Shinto. A company will buy one for 80,000 USD or more, and the shrine will put it up next to the other tori. The tori will stay where it is until it rots and falls over, at which point you can either buy a new one, or give up your space. There are over 4km of tori pathways at Fushim- Inari. That is a lot of tori and a lot of money! The tori pathway wound through and up the mountain, occasionally opening up to a labyrinth of personal shrines, smaller tori, and fox statues. There are over 30,000 shrines on the Fushimi-Inari shrine grounds. That is a lot of stone tablets and candles and fox statues, let me tell you. The grounds were vast, and the tori pathways pulled you through dense, quiet, green forests, which was unusual- I was so used to the urban sprawl. Many shrines had candles left unattended and lit, and nobody seemed to mind. The entire experience was very religious, and left the me with that feeling of something 'more'. Not That I am going to begin worshiping Inari anytime soon, but when visiting a site like Fushimi the culmination of architecture, forest, folk lore, and the very presence of the Japanese people and their varied beliefs, all steeped in a thousand years of Shinto culture emanate a very strong... presence. It's interesting that 90% of the Japanese claim to not be religious, including my parents, but nearly ever single person participates in some aspect of shinto religion on a daily basis. My own parents have new years wish tablets, Omamori safety trinkets, and certain very Shinto-y phrases that they say every day- to maintain happy balance and good fortune.








The pilgrims on the climb up the mountain were varied and interesting. Two young, strapping American adventurers were bounding, two steps at-a-time, up the stone steps on the tori path, both looked like they belonged on a poster depicting the 'Young American Man'. They both sported Flannel T-shirts over Jeans and sturdy hiking boots along with hikers backpacks and their Nalgene water bottles. It's hard to explain, but Americans become painfully obvious after living with the Japanese for any period of time. There were lots of middle aged people, all enjoying their weekend. Even very old, feeble Japanese men and women were giving the hike to the top of Fushimi their best. They panted and sweated, but were dedicated to reaching their goal. There was also a high school cross country team who was running their way up the tori pathways, I was tempted to join- it looked like fun. From all of these groups, save the Americans, there was a common phrased used with one another, "Ganbarimasu, ganbarimasu." Keep at it.





Finally reaching the top, I realized partially why so braved the steep paths. The view alone was worth it. However, the air up on the top of the mountain was different, it was cleaner, and it filtered out the helter-skelter of all the tourists and picture takers. Those who were willing to put in a good hour and a half of constant climbing were the only ones who were up here. I would do it again in a heartbeat. One could go even further up the mountain, which my Otosan and myself did. The kids were hungry and my okasan was a bit tired herself, I think, though she wouldn't say it. Further up was a large set of more personal shrines featuring a large boulder with the distinctive Shinto grass belt wrapped around it. My Otosan said the kamis (Shinto Gods) used the grass belts, so that is the explanation I will take.






It was a beautiful trip up, and a precarious trip going down. Jin, the 3 year old, had taken quite a liking to me, so he insisted on holding my hand on the way down. He also insisted on running the whole way down because his big brother was running ahead of him. He also quite liked walking on the rock edges of the pathway that usually overlooked a steep drop or cliff face, treating them like balance beams. Our mad dash down the mountain drew a lot of odd looks, and it must have been a strange sight- two small Japanese boys pulling a Caucasian young woman down a Japanese Shinto Shrine in the heart of Kyoto, Japan. In situations like that, you suddenly know how it feels to be in that .5% minority group.

The entire experience was wonderful. I saw a lot of other Kansai Gaidai students at the foot of the mountain, but I will admit, I no longer felt like one of the other students in the dorms. I think during this experience, something new clicked into place. I felt like a different person as I scooped up my nephew and started chatting with him in childish Japanese. It is moments like those that I am so grateful I chose to participate in this home stay. You truly do get to experience Japan in the most straightforward, non-romanticized, and truly authentic way. You are not murmuring to other Americans in English about what you think a certain symbol or practice or building means. Instead, you struggle to formulate your thoughts into a coherent Japanese sentence to ask your Otosan, because you are part of a Japanese family, and no longer simply a college student.