Who Is Inari? The Rice Kami of Fushimi, Foxes and Torii

The first question on the frequently asked questions page of Fushimi Inari Taisha is about foxes, and the answer is short. Foxes are messengers of the kami, the shrine says, and that does not make the kami a fox.

Visitors who know only the foxes miss the rest: a kami of rice and food, a Kyoto shrine said to head some thirty thousand others, a founding story about a rice cake that turned into a bird, and a long relationship with a Buddhist temple. This page separates the kami from the messenger, and the shrine's own account from the records outside it.

The rice cake and the white bird

The shrine's origin story comes from the Yamashiro no kuni fudoki, a provincial record that the shrine says was completed around 713. The Encyclopedia of Shinto notes that only a few fragments remain. In it, a man named Hatanoirogu uses a rice cake as an archery target. The cake turns into a white bird and flies to a mountain peak, where it settles and turns into growing rice. The shrine reads the name Inari as "rice has grown," and adds that other explanations exist.

The same fragments show that the name was written in more than one way. According to the Encyclopedia of Shinto, the Hata clan used one set of characters and the Kada clan used another, which suggests that different clans around the mountain shaped the cult differently.

The shrine dates the enshrinement of its kami to the first Day of the Horse in the second month of 711, on the order of Empress Genmei. That date comes from an old shrine text and from the shrine's own chronology. We found no independent source that confirms it.

One kami, several parents

The Encyclopedia of Shinto says Ukanomitama is most commonly known as Inari. It adds that in the medieval period the kami was joined with popular combined figures such as Ugajin and Uka Benzaiten. Note the parentage: in one book the father is the storm kami, in another the creator pair. The sources do not settle it.

Foxes, mountain kami and a Buddhist neighbor

The fox and the kami meet in several ways. The encyclopedia explains one old belief: a mountain kami comes down in spring to become the kami of the rice paddy, riding a horse and led by a fox. Places where the mountain kami was welcomed became "fox mounds." A pun helped, too. One of the food kami names, Miketsukami, sounds like the words for "three fox kami." The encyclopedia also records that foxes were thought to deliver oracles, and that Fushimi Inari has a shrine within its grounds where fox spirits are worshipped.

The shrine's own answer is narrower. The messengers are not the foxes of the mountains. Like the kami, they cannot be seen, and the shrine calls them white foxes. For the folklore fox, see Kitsune; it is a different subject.

The Buddhist link is just as old. The encyclopedia describes a famous image of an old man carrying rice who promises Kukai to protect the temple Toji. The shrine's chronology says that in 827 trees on the mountain were cut for Toji, that the kami's displeasure was blamed for disturbances, and that the court then granted the kami a rank. A separate current of devotion, the encyclopedia says, joins the Buddhist deity Dakiniten with Inari.

Fushimi Inari today

The shrine stands on Inariyama in Fushimi, Kyoto, and says it is the head shrine of around thirty thousand. The encyclopedia gives "more than 30,000." Both are estimates, and the encyclopedia adds that counting small and private shrines raises the total greatly.

Visitors walk under torii that the shrine says number around 10,000 along the mountain paths. The shrine explains that torii had become a common offering by the early Edo period, a sign of a wish or of thanks, passed from the worshipper to the kami. They are painted vermilion, a color the shrine calls an amulet against evil and an expression of the harvest. Climbing has always been part of the visit. The shrine's chronology records that the court writer Sei Shonagon described the climb as exhausting in her Pillow Book, around the year 1000.

The liveliest festival is Hatsuuma, on the first Day of the Horse in February, which the shrine says marks the enshrinement. The encyclopedia suggests it may also echo an older folk welcome of the mountain kami in spring. Prayers have widened over time. The shrine says the imperial court once prayed for harvests, for rain to come or stop, and for peace, and that people in the Heian period also prayed for good marriages. Today it lists business, trades, household safety, travel and the performing arts.

What to look for, and a worked example

When a fox or a rice image turns up, a short list helps:

• Messenger or kami? The fox is the messenger. The kami is Ukanomitama and the others in the main hall.
• Shinto or Buddhist? An image of a deity riding a fox may be Dakiniten.
• How old is the object? A fox figure from the nineteenth century says little about practice in the eighth.

A worked example: the Horniman Museum in London holds a painted clay figure from the late Edo or Meiji period, bought in 1898. Its record calls it the goddess Inari riding a fox, then cites an attribution to Dakiniten and keeps older labels such as "mountain god" and "war god." The record itself shows how the images blur.

Common mistakes and mix-ups

• "Inari is a fox." The shrine says the fox is a messenger and the kami is not a fox.
• "Inari has one origin story." The Kojiki, a Nihon Shoki variant and the fudoki fragments each say something different.
• "The thousand torii are a count." The shrine's map names one stretch Senbon Torii, "thousand torii," and its FAQ gives around 10,000 along the paths.
• "Exactly 30,000 shrines." The sources say "around" and "more than."
• "Fushimi Inari is a Buddhist temple." It is a Shinto shrine. Its ties to the temple Toji are real, and a separate Dakiniten current exists beside it.