This week marks the final installment in my blogging “tour” of Fushimi Inari Shrine, which means today, we finally reach the summit.
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Climbing the Lower Slopes of Mount Inari
As the god of rice, merchants, swordsmiths, fertility, foxes, and many other things, Inari Okami’s presence is ubiquitous in Shinto worship. Over ten thousand Japanese shrines have altars dedicated to Inari, but Fushimi Inari Taisha, south of Kyoto, is Japan’s largest and most important Inari shrine. For the last few weeks, I’ve been blogging an extended “visit” to Fushimi Inari, starting at the shrine’s main entrance, proceeding past the main altar, and finally (today) starting the climb up Mount Inari itself. Fushimi Inari is famous for its thousands of bright red torii – gates that traditionally mark the entrance to a Shinto sacred space. The entrance
Read moreTorii: Gateway to a Sacred Space
The entrance to a Shinto shrine (in Japan, but also elsewhere) is customarily marked by a torii, a form of gate which marks the entrance to a sacred space. Torii come in many sizes, and may be made from stone, wood, or other materials, though many (if not the majority) are constructed from wood and painted red. (The color translates “red” from Japanese, even though many Westerners would call it “red-orange”–or, in some cases, simply “orange”). Many shrines have more than one torii, and the gates often grow more frequent the closer visitors get to the shrine’s most sacred spaces. Fushimi Inari, south of Kyoto, reputedly has over ten
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