Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine and a Summary – Joel’s Journeys & Jaunts

This afternoon, I took in only one sight in Kyoto, another shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, to be specific. What a surprise, right? Who could have expected a shrine in Kyoto?

I ended up spending much more time there than I expected. By the time I left, it was too late to make it anywhere else I wanted to go to with enough time before it closed.

So I took a long walk back to my hotel instead.

Sadly, this is my last afternoon in Kyoto. I leave tomorrow morning for my next destination. I say “sadly” because… no, I’ll save that for the Kyoto summary that appears at the end of this post.

Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine

If I had to nickname Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, it’d be The Shrine of the Ten Thousand Torii.

You might think I’m exaggerating. I don’t think I am. My walking tour app says there are more than 10,000. Two of my guidebooks say it’s thousands. Another says that rather than the 1,000 referenced in the name of the path through the shrine grounds, it’s more like 10,000.

I didn’t count, but I have no trouble believing those numbers.

It starts unassumingly. Close to the street, there’s a big, brilliant vermilion torii. Of course, if it weren’t brilliant, it wouldn’t be vermillion. So it’s convenient that it’s brilliant.

Beyond that first torii, there’s a short promenade paved with grey paving stones. At the end of the promenade, there’s an identical torii.

Okay. That’s two. Just 9,998 to go. Stay with me.

The main shrine building and its ancillary buildings are just past that second torii. Fox statues are the guardians of the temple. A couple of stone fox statues stand in front of the main shrine. There are others scattered around the temple grounds. My guidebook tells me that they hold keys to the granary. I saw something that looked like a key in the mouth of one of the foxes in front of the main shrine. The other looked to me like it had a ball in its mouth. They both wore red bibs.

The main shrine building is quite attractive. It’s predominantly red, with gold trim and some dark green bits. It has a pagoda-like roof.

“But, wait,” you exclaim. “You mentioned only two torii. What about the other 9,998? Should I stop, go to the bathroom, and get a snack before you launch into them?”

I don’t think there’s any need for that. I’m not going to describe them each individually. It shouldn’t take long.

The magic happens behind the main shrine.

The Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine’s main shrine is at the foot of Inari Mountain. In earlier posts, I would have made a joke about how convenient it is that they both have “Inari” in their name. But I’ve matured so much since then, so I won’t.

The shrine’s grounds run all the way up the mountain.

The summit of Inari Mountain is 233 metres (764 feet) above sea level. The city averages 55 metres (180 feet) above sea level. So, it’s not a huge mountain, but it’s more than a small hill.

A path runs, with some turns, back from the main shrine to, and up, the mountain. That’s where the torii come in.

The path proceeds under a series of tightly spaced vermillion torii. There are only a few gaps in the series of torii all the way up the mountain. It’s not always a straight path, so it’s quite long.

The first of the torii are quite tall and wide. Farther along, the path splits into two parallel paths with lower, narrower torii, but they’re still as close together, if not closer. The temple directs visitors to one path for each direction.

After a while, the two paths converge and the torii get taller and wider again, although I don’t think they’re as tall or as wide as the first set. This continues all the way up the mountain.

Where necessary, which is much of the way, it isn’t so much a path as a set of stairs. It’s an amazing sight to see and walk through the thousands of tori marching up the mountain.

There are a few small shrines on the way up at the gaps in the torii.

At one of the gaps, a dirt path proceeds up the mountain in another direction. Only a small percentage of the people walking through the torii climb veered off at this point. I was one of them.

After a while, I came to a small plateau with a small shrine and a store selling religious items.

As a bonus, the path passes through a bamboo forest at that point. Eat your heart out, Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, which I saw this morning. This bamboo stand doesn’t have to contend with the crowds that Arashiyama does.

I continued on a little farther and came to what looked like an old cemetery in a depression off the side of the path. I say “looked like” because what I thought, and continue to think, were tombstones were packed together fairly tightly. If they were indeed tombstones, they could only be marking interred ashes. There wasn’t anywhere near enough room for full bodies. Or maybe they were just memorial stones and not marking the site of any remains. Or maybe it wasn’t a cemetery at all and they were something completely different. I haven’t a clue.

A little beyond there, the bamboo stand changed back to a regular forest. I pushed on for a bit, but it didn’t seem to be headed in a useful direction. So I turned around, headed back and resumed the torii already in progress.

Further up the mountain, there was another plateau with a washroom. On its wall hung a sign in Japanese and English. The English said, “The Inari Mountain is considered to be a sacred place, so that there are no restrooms after this point.”

I can’t speak for the entire population, or even just the population of old men. However, in the mind of this old man, there are times when peeing is a sacred activity. I’m just saying. Fortunately, Buddha smiled on me. I didn’t need a toilet any higher up on the mountain.

Sacks and non-alcoholic drinks must not violate the sanctity of the mountain because a few small stores sold them and souvenirs above that point.

Near the top, there’s an open area with a terrific view of Kyoto. Unfortunately, at that time of day, the sun was pointing somewhat into my camera, so the picture did not turn out all that well. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

At the summit, there’s another small, mostly stone, shrine and a few of what looked like the same funereal markers I saw before.

There wasn’t a lot of English directional signage on the mountain. Some. Not a lot.

Near the summit, I found one directing me back down to the main shrine. It took me on a different path. That one didn’t have torii along it. And at the lower level, it dumped me onto a residential city street, rather than directly back to the shrine.

The Walk Back

Instead of making my way back to Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, i decided to take a long walk back to my hotel.

The start of my walk was along some unexciting city streets. But then it veered down a bit to a walkway beside Kamo River. At that point, it’s a very urban river, with the city looming not far from its banks. There’s some, but not a lot of vegetation by the river banks I walked a ong..

Then, it was time to cross a bridge when I came to it and follow the street on it toward my hotel.

And that, dear reader, is all he wrote about this afternoon.

Kyoto Summary

I said in the introduction to this post that this was sadly my last afternoon in Kyoto. The reason I was sad is that my time here was far too short. Far, far, far too short.

There are so many things that I didn’t see or do for lack of time, including some highly recommended sights. There are museums and galleries. I didn’t visit any of them. My guidebooks and/or walking tour app recommended more temples and shrines that I didn’t have time for. And there are some neighbourhoods and parks I would have liked to take a look at if I had more time.

Fortunately, my life doesn’t depend on me picking a favourite of the places I visited in Kyoto, because I couldn’t do it. There are a few spectacular sights in Kyoto and more that come close to achieving spectacularness. i couldn’t imagine picking a favourite.

I’m 72 and I can say that for only a little more than a month now. Japan is a long way away from Toronto, and there are a lot of other places in the world. It saddens me that I may not get to spend any more time in Kyoto. I had four nights, translating into three-and-a-half days, here on this trip. I probably would have enjoyed at least twice that.