Inari

“ And in more than one of the larger towns you may see in the court of some great miya a countless host of stone foxes, of all dimensions, from toy-figures but a few inches high to the colossi whose pedestals tower above your head, all squatting around the temple in tiered ranks of thousands. Such shrines and temples, everybody knows, are dedicated to Inari the God of Rice. ”

“ Reader, pray take not the story of the O'Iwa Inari, the Yotsuya Kwaidan, as a mere fairy tale or novel of the day. The shrine of the Tamiya Inari stands now to attest the truth of the tradition. Let the doubter but witness the faith of the believer in the powers of the fearful lady; and, if doubt still continues to exist, the salutary fear of others at least will inspire respect. ”

“ Hirata calls her an ihe no kami, or household deity.
The Sake (rice-beer) God is sometimes the same as the Food-Goddess, and at others Sukuna-bikona.
Inari.—Notwithstanding the difference of sex, and to some extent of function, the Rice-God Inari is generally recognized by the Japanese as identical with Uke-mochi. Inari, it is explained, is only the name of the locality of her best-known shrine near Kiôto, first established in 711. It is not to be doubted that in Japan the name of the place of his worship has frequently been converted into the name of the God. ”

“ Inasmuch as rice is the most important and necessary product of Japan, the honours which Inari Sama receives are extraordinary. Almost every house in the country contains somewhere about the grounds a pretty little shrine in his honour; and on a certain day of the second month of the year his feast is celebrated with much beating of drums and other noises, in which the children take a special delight. "On this day," says the Ô-Satsuyô, a Japanese cyclopædia, "at Yedo, where there are myriads upon myriads of shrines to Inari Sama, there are all sorts of ceremonies. ”

“ Wherever there is a spot shadier and pleasanter to look upon than the rest, there may be seen the red portal of a shrine which the simple piety of the country folk has raised to Inari Sama, the patron god of farming, or to some other tutelary deity of the place. At the eastern outlet of the valley a strip of blue sea bounds the horizon; westward are the distant mountains. ”

“ And it is believed that the god Inari came unseen with his hammer and forged the steel too. Though Hachiman is Buddhist and Inari is Shinto. But these are not things to talk about. There is one religion, which is yours, and there is another religion, which is mine, and it is not good that we talk together of them. There are things that people call superstition when they are of another religion, though they may be very true."
They walked a little farther, and then Mr. Colson, determined to penetrate Kanamaro's mask of indifference, observed—
"It's a very sad thing this about Mr. Deacon." ”

“ I seemed to wander in dreams and thought that human life must soon cease here. If I had not given myself up to idle fictions [she herself had written several] and poetry, but had practised religious austerities night and day, I would not have seen such a dream-world.
At Hasé Temple a cedar branch was cast down to me by the Inari god and this thing [the loss of her husband] would not have happened if I had visited the Inari shrine on my way home. ”

“ Note 26.—Thousands of these miniature shrines are to be seen in the rice-fields or in the vicinity of hamlets. They are erected in honour of the Spirit of Food. As to the name "Inari," it is said by some sinologues to be that of a place, but the general belief in Japan makes it a contraction of ine-ninai or the rice-carrier. The fox is supposed to be an agent of the god ”

“ Ukemochi, the Food-goddess, is one of the two great gods worshipped at Ise, the Sun-goddess45 being the other. There is a tendency in modern times to identify her with Inari, a male grain-deity. Shrines of Inari are to be seen in every village, and even in many houses. They may be recognised by two figures of foxes which stand before them. These animals are thought by many to be the god himself, and small offerings of such food as is thought acceptable to foxes are placed before them. Shinto scholars say that they are only the god’s attendants or messengers. ”

“ Susa no wo, the Rain-storm, provides mankind with useful trees. He and his wife are regarded as gods of wedlock. Inari, the Grain-god, is a comprehensive answerer of prayer from a petition for a good harvest to one for the restoration of stolen property. On the other hand, a genuine deified man like Temmangu may send rain in time of drought. An obscure deity, known as Suitengu, is worshipped in Tokio at the present day as a protector against the perils of the sea, burglary, and the pains of parturition. ”

“ But there is a more ignorant current of opinion which takes the animal for the God himself. Klaproth finds in Japanese books that "the people in Japan worship the inari (fox) as a tutelar God: little temples are dedicated to him in many houses, especially of the commoner folk. They ask his advice in difficulties, and set rice or beans for him at night. They take him to be a kami, i.e., the soul of a good man deceased." Be it observed that inari does not mean fox, and that a kami is something quite different from "the soul of a good man deceased." ”

“ But grain is often represented by an animal in other mythologies, and possibly this may be the case in Shinto also. Inari is much invoked by the peasant to grant him good crops, but as is so often the case, his proper agricultural character is frequently forgotten, and he is appealed to for help in all imaginable difficulties, as for the cure of small-pox or the discovery of a thief. ”

“ Such a consummation was the object of many vows to Inari and the subject of many poems addressed to the Star of the Weaver at the festival of Tanabata. If he could raise the sum of 600 ryo (about £60) , the rest was easy. Debts had to be paid, innumerable gifts conferred on patrons, companions, and attendants, of whom farewell was taken at a great feast on the day of departure. It requires much suffering and evil influence to uproot from the heart of any Japanese woman the flowers of gratitude and affection. ”

“ The parents of the child who refuses to be shaved or bathed have recourse to Jigyoba-no-Inati. The god is besought to send one of his retainers to amuse the child, and reconcile it to the new order of things, and render it both docile and happy. Also if a child is naughty, or falls sick, this Inari is appealed to. If the prayer be granted, some small present is made to the temple—sometimes a votive picture, such as those pasted by the door, representing the successful result of the petition. ”

“ These shrines were large and ornamental, with a great deal of gilt about them, and they were placed on poles borne upon the shoulders of men. Four other small shrines followed, and before the pageant was over, the afternoon was nearly consumed. This procession was on its way to the great Temple of Inari, several miles distant.
One morning we devoted to visiting two cloisonné studios and some curio shops. The first studio, Nakamura's, was very artistically arranged; one large room encircled a miniature garden laid out in true Japanese style with dwarf trees, rockeries, and a tiny little lake. ”

“ Although neither the subject nor any one else knows beforehand what particular gods will descend in any one trance, a certain clique of gods usually frequents any one man. What the divine set shall be depends upon what gods the man is intimate with in his normal state. One man's familiar spirits will thus consist of the various Inari, gods of agriculture; another's of defunct and deified gyōja, pious hermits who lived much in the mountains, and are particularly familiar with the peaks; a third's of the higher Shintō divinities. Each is visited by his intimates ”

“ Inari the temple of Shinto religion on the way to Fushimi, is a most famous one in this country.
It is the head of Inaris which are worshiped almost every place.
The temple stands on a hill by name Inariyama from which the sight of the river Yodogawa can be seen.
The distance to the temple from Sanjio is 37 Chios.
寺湧泉東洛
SHENNIUJI
Shenniuji was build by Morotsugu, a high officer under the reign of Montoku Tenno about the year 850 after Christ. ”

“ Year by year more shrines of Inari crumble down, never to be rebuilt. Year by year the statuaries make fewer images of foxes. Year by year fewer victims of fox-possession are taken to the hospitals to be treated according to the best scientific methods by Japanese physicians who speak German. The cause is not to be found in the decadence of the old faiths: a superstition outlives a religion. Much less is it to be sought for in the efforts of proselytising missionaries from the West—most of whom profess an earnest belief in devils. ”

“ Wherefore hundreds of aged men cut off their queues. Then another rumour was circulated to the effect that the police had been secretly instructed to seize the one-thousandth person of those who crossed the new bridge the first day, and to treat him after the manner of Gensuke. And at the time of the great festival of the Rice-God, when the city is usually thronged by farmers coming to worship at the many shrines of Inari this year there came but few; and the loss to local commerce was estimated at several thousand yen. ”

“ Fox-images in Izumo seem to be more numerous than in other provinces, and they are symbols there, so far as the mass of the peasantry is concerned, of something else besides the worship of the Rice-Deity. Indeed, the old conception of the Deity of Rice-fields has been overshadowed and almost effaced among the lowest classes by a weird cult totally foreign to the spirit of pure Shinto—the Fox-cult. The worship of the retainer has almost replaced the worship of the god. Originally the Fox was sacred to Inari only as the Tortoise is still sacred to Kompira ”

“ In olden days, we know, science went hand in hand with sharp poverty—clearly an undesirable sequel to Inarime’s protected girlhood. With such a possibility ahead, Dr. Selaka recognised the rashness of arresting the eye of hope upon this particular marriage, despite the depressing reflection that his maniacal brother would infinitely prefer to support an archæological son-in-law, than see Inarime gracefully [Pg 118] enthroned above Athenian matrons, a jewel in solid, unlearned gold. ”

“ Perhaps Pericles affected the manner and bearing of the Ancients, with whom he exclusively communed, and perhaps Inarime had ostentatiously caught this trick from him. Laughter with them was as rare as anger, and both held their pulses in complete subjection.
Something of Inarime’s life,—while that lucky young man, known in Greece as “the man of confidence,” who can be trusted to act as knight to a lady, is leading her mule to the distant village of Mousoulou, and while Gustav Reineke, on the “Iris,” is speeding towards the shores of Tenos. This life is simple enough: unemotional, unanalysable ”

“ The eleventh shogun, Ienari, after fifty-one years of office, resigned in favour of his son, Ieyoshi, who ruled from 1838 to 1853. Ienari survived his resignation by four years, during which he resided in the western castle, and, under the title of o-gosho, continued to take part in the administration. As for Ieyoshi, his tenure of power is chiefly notable for the strenuous efforts made by his prime minister, Mizuno Echizen no Kami, to substitute economy for the costly luxury that prevailed. ”

“ Let us leave the city of Teloth and fare together among the hills of spring. Thou shalt shew me the ways of travel and I will attend thy songs at evening when the stars one by one bring dreams to the minds of dreamers. And peradventure it may be that Oonai the city of lutes and dancing is even the fair Aira thou seekest, for it is told that thou hast not known Aira since the old days, and a name often changeth. Let us go to Oonai, O Iranon of the golden head, where men shall know our longings and welcome us as brothers, nor even laugh or frown at what we say. ”

“ To Indra Dyaus the Asura hath bowed him down, to Indra mighty Earth with wide-extending tracts, to win the light, with wide-spread tracts. All Gods of one accord have set Indra in front preeminent. For Indra all libations must be set apart, all man's libations set apart. 2. In all libations men with hero spirit urge the Universal One, each seeking several light, each fain to win the light apart. Thee, furthering like a ship, will we set to the chariot-pole of strength, As men who win with sacrifices Indra's thought, men who win Indra with their lauds. ”

“ Yet ‘some very thoughtful scholars’ see traces of totemism in Indra! {111a} Mr. Max Müller thinks that this theory is ‘obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent’ (America, it seems) . Indra is said to have been born from a cow, like the African Heitsi Eibib. {111b} There are unholy stories about Indra and rams. But I for one, as I have said already, would never deny that these may be part of the pleasant unconscious poetry of the Vedic hymnists. Indra’s legend is rich in savage obscenities; they may, or may not, be survivals from savagery. ”

“ But, as in Japan itself, the inao is a familiar object also in the Kurile Islands. It is the sign and symbol of religious worship. It is more than this: it is itself a sacred object, so sacred, at least in the Kurile Islands, that no woman dares to make it, and the men only after special purificatory ceremonies. Materially it is a stick of willow scraped, with the scrapings still adhering to it in long curls. This object is dedicated to the god and erected as an offering. It is well-known in Japan outside the Ainu communities, from which the Japanese have learned its use. ”