Yesterday, I got the chance to visit Toyokawa-Inari, which is one of the main shrines to the goddess Inari in Japan (the others being Fushimi-Inari in Kyoto, which I've visited, and Yutoku-Inari in Saga, which I haven't).
Inari is the Shinto goddess of foxes, so there were a few fox statues (kitsune) dotted around.
Actually, there were quite a lot.
In addition to foxes, Inari is also goddess of fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture and industry and, because of her association with industry, there are an abundance of banners around the shrine, each displaying the name of a business hoping for Inari's blessing. (If you visit Fushimi-Inari, you'll see something similar, with the names of businesses written on the many, many torii gates.)
Inari is also linked with Daikokuten, the cheerful guy pictured below. He is one of Japan's "Seven Lucky Gods", about whom I will no doubt write more in a later post.
No comments:
Post a Comment