Fushimi Inari Taisha

Fushimi Inari Taisha stands at the western foot of Inariyama, a 233 m hill at the southern end of the Higashiyama range in Kyoto. It is the head shrine of Inari, the kami of rice cultivation, harvests and — in later centuries — of commerce and business prosperity, and it presides over an estimated 30,000 Inari shrines throughout Japan.

The shrine is best known for its senbon torii, literally "thousand torii": two parallel tunnels of vermilion gates just above the main precinct, and a further network of gates, stone altars and sub-shrines that covers the whole mountain. Each gate is the gift of a person or company, whose name and donation date are painted in black on the back of the pillars. The total number of torii on the mountain is usually put at around 10,000.

The lower precinct is a conventional shrine complex with a two-storey Tower Gate, a worship hall and the main sanctuary, rebuilt in 1499 after the Ōnin War. Foxes (kitsune), regarded as the messengers of Inari, appear everywhere as stone statues, often holding a key to the rice granary, a jewel or a scroll in their mouths.

According to shrine tradition, Inari was first worshipped on the three peaks of Inariyama in 711 by the Hata clan, an immigrant family that played a large role in the early development of the Kyoto basin. In the Heian period the shrine received high court rank and became a pilgrimage site for all classes. The Ōnin War destroyed the buildings in 1468; the present main sanctuary dates from their reconstruction completed in 1499. Donating torii became widespread from the Edo period onward, when Inari was increasingly worshipped as a patron of trade.

Inari is among the most widely worshipped kami in Japan, first as the deity of rice and food, later as patron of business success, which explains why so many torii carry company names. The fox messengers, the red-lacquered gates and the small stone mounds (otsuka) left by individual worshippers give the mountain the character of a vast devotional landscape rather than a single shrine.

The year's largest crowds come at New Year (hatsumōde), when the shrine is one of the busiest in western Japan. Hatsuuma, on the first Day of the Horse in February, commemorates the descent of the deity onto the mountain. The Inari Festival (Inari-sai) runs from late April to early May, when the portable shrines are carried to a temporary resting place and back.