What Are Komainu? The Paired Guardians at Shrine and Temple Gates

At the foot of a shrine's approach, two stone figures sit on their pedestals and face the path. They look alike, yet one keeps its mouth open and the other shut. A visitor may be told they are lions, or dogs, or the sounds "a" and "un." Each answer is partly right, and each comes from a different period and a different kind of source. This page treats komainu as sacred art and as a custom. It asks what the pair is for, where the form came from, why the two figures once had different names, and what the open and closed mouths are said to mean. Where the sources disagree, or stay silent, we say so.

What the pair is for

The Kokugakuin University encyclopedia describes komainu as paired figures at the entrance of shrine buildings, or beside their torii and approaches. Most are stone, though bronze, iron, wood and ceramic examples exist. The two are typically male and female, and sometimes one has horns. As guardians, they are believed to stand for the removal of evil and the protection of the ground around the kami.

The Cleveland Museum of Art says much the same about a wooden pair in its collection: figures placed at the entrance of shrines and temples to ward off evil spirits. The Kokugakuin glossary adds that they were imported from the Asian continent and later took on a decorative meaning as well.

What the open and closed mouths mean

The best-known explanation is the "a-un" pair. The encyclopedia says one figure has an open mouth and one a closed mouth, and calls this posture a symbol of the alpha and omega of the Sanskrit alphabet. The Cleveland Museum gives the same reading in its own words: the open mouth is the syllable "ah," the closed mouth is "um," and together they correspond to infinity, the alpha and omega. The English Wikipedia article agrees and calls the pattern Buddhist in origin, shared with the guardian kings at temple gates.

That last point can be checked on the ground. The two giant Ni-o, the Two Kings, in the Great South Gate of Todaiji in Nara are also a pair with one mouth open and one closed. The temple's own page says work on them began in 1203 and that the open-mouthed figure was set up first.

Three cautions keep the explanation honest:

• It is a symbolic reading, not a rule built into every pair. The encyclopedia notes that in some pairs both mouths are open.
• None of the sources we read says when the a-un reading was first applied to these statues, so we cannot date it.
• The sources describe the sounds as the first and last of the Sanskrit alphabet in a loose, traditional sense. We did not check this against a Sanskrit or Siddham-script source.

A lion that became a dog

The name is a puzzle. The encyclopedia says it literally means "Korean lions." Koma is an old word for the Korean peninsula, but the figures reached Japan only through the peninsula, so the term may simply mean "foreign." The idea of paired guardian beasts is said to reach back to Egypt or India, yet the ones that came to Japan began in Tang-dynasty China. A second style arrived from Song China in the Kamakura period and is often called kara jishi, "Chinese lions." The Cleveland Museum holds a Tang marble guardian lion of the sort found at the entrance of Buddhist temples in China, and notes that lions were tied to Buddhism early, since the teaching is said to spread like a lion's roar.

JAANUS, the art-historical dictionary hosted by Columbia University, explains how the names split. In the early Heian period the two statues were clearly distinguished. The figure on the left, with an open mouth, looked like a lion and was called shishi. The one on the right, with a closed mouth, looked like a dog, was called komainu, and sometimes had a horn on its head. Over time the word komainu came to cover both, and the shapes became alike except for the mouths.

Cleveland's wooden pair from the Kamakura period keeps the old split: the open-mouthed one is a karashishi, "Chinese lion," and the closed-mouthed one, once horned, is a komainu. So the terms are not used the same way everywhere.

Reading the records: who wrote what, and when

JAANUS says that in the Heian period komainu served as weights or door-stops for curtains and screens in the Seiryoden, the Kyoto imperial residence. English Wikipedia adds that wooden and later stone pairs were established by the mid-Heian period, the tenth century, but says exact dating remains uncertain. We found no firm date for the first Japanese pair.

What to look at when you meet a pair

• The mouths. Note which is open and which is closed. Some pairs have both open.
• A horn. If one head has a single horn, that is the old mark of the closed-mouthed figure.
• The material and paint. Stone is most common, but wood, bronze, iron and ceramic occur. The Cleveland note says wooden pairs of this kind were once painted red and white.
• The place. Wikipedia says that from the Edo period they were set along the approach road, while older ones stand within the grounds.
• The animal. From the Edo period, according to Wikipedia, boars, tigers, rats, dragons and foxes were also used. A pair of foxes guards Inari shrines. These often wear red bibs like those on statues of Jizo.

Common mix-ups

"They are dogs." The name says dog or lion depending on the translation, and the encyclopedia calls them lions. In the early Heian arrangement only the closed-mouthed figure was the dog-like one.

"They come from Korea." The word Koma points to Korea, but the encyclopedia says the figures came from Tang China and merely passed through the peninsula.

"Every pair is a and un." Many are. The encyclopedia says some pairs have both mouths open.

"Komainu and shishi are the same word." In the early Heian period they were two names for two figures. Later the terms merged, and some museums still keep both.

"The foxes at Inari shrines are komainu." Wikipedia calls them a variant of the komainu theme and says white foxes are messengers of the kami. The fox and the kami are not the same, though Wikipedia notes that popular belief sometimes pictures the kami as a fox.

Reading the pair

A visitor can hold all these layers at once. The pose comes from a symbolic reading of sound. The shape comes from continental guardian art. The names carry a history of changes, and the figure still stands where it always stood, at the edge of sacred ground.