Kyoto, Japan
伏見稲荷大社 · foo-SHEE-mee ee-NAH-ree TIE-shah
A shrine to the god of rice and of business, at the foot of a wooded hill. The paths up the hill run through thousands of red gates. Every one was paid for by somebody giving thanks or asking for luck.
Photo: Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
You are standing at the head shrine of Inari, the god Japanese farmers asked for rice and Japanese shopkeepers now ask for good business. There are some thirty thousand Inari shrines in Japan. This is the first of them, founded in 711.
Behind the buildings a hill rises 233 metres. The paths that climb it pass under about ten thousand red gates, set so close together that they make tunnels.
Nothing here needs a ticket, and nothing closes. The counters for charms and prayers keep daytime hours.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The great gate and the tower gate | Free, always open |
| The main hall | Free; prayers by a priest are paid |
| Senbon torii, the two tunnels | Free, always open |
| The inner shrine and the heavy-light stones | Free |
| The ponds and stone altars | Free; unlit at night |
| Yotsutsuji crossing and its view | Free; about 45 minutes up |
| The three peaks and the top | Free; the loop adds about 40 minutes |
A gate like this is called a torii. It marks the line between the everyday world and a place where a god lives. Most shrines have one or two. This one has thousands, because of a custom that took hold here about three hundred years ago: when a wish was granted, you gave the god a gate.
Walk up, then turn round. On the back of every gate, in black, are the name of the giver and the date. Most are companies.
The stone foxes you see everywhere are the god's messengers. They are not the god. Look at what each one holds in its mouth.
The shrine never closes and costs nothing. The whole loop over the hill takes two to three hours.
"It is a temple." It is a shrine. Temples in Japan are Buddhist. Shrines belong to Shinto, the older worship of the gods of places and of nature. There is no statue of the god to see.
"People here worship foxes." The foxes serve Inari. Japanese people do leave them fried tofu, which foxes are said to love.
"There are exactly a thousand gates." "Senbon torii", thousand gates, is the name of the two tightest tunnels near the bottom, which have roughly eight hundred. On the whole hill there are about ten thousand.
"The gates are ancient." The custom is some three centuries old, and the wood rots. A gate lasts ten or twenty years and is then replaced. Most of what you walk under is younger than you are.
The stops run uphill, from the station to the top. You can turn back at any of them.
From the station you walk straight under a tall red gate. Bow your head slightly as you pass. Japanese visitors keep to the side, since the middle of the path is the god's.
A bronze fox sits on each side of the way. One holds a key in its mouth. It is the key to the storehouse where the rice is kept. Others hold a round jewel, a sheaf of rice, or a scroll.
The colour of the gates is vermilion. It was made from mercury and lead ores, which keep wood from rotting, and the colour is thought to drive off evil.
The two-storey gate was given by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1589. His letter of 1588 to the shrine still exists. In it he promises ten thousand measures of rice if his mother is cured.
When the gate was taken apart for repair in 1973, the date 1589 was found written on a timber inside. The story had been doubted until then.
In 1468 the whole shrine burned in a civil war that wrecked Kyoto. The main hall was rebuilt in 1499 and is the oldest building here. Its roof sweeps forward in one long curve to shelter the people praying.
Five gods are worshipped inside, together called Inari. Nobody sees them. The doors stay shut.
To pray as people do here: drop a coin in the box, ring the bell, bow twice, clap your hands twice, make your wish in silence, and bow once more.
Foxes came down to the rice fields in spring and went back to the hills in autumn, as the rice god was thought to do. They also ate the mice that ate the rice. So the fox became the god's servant.
The red bibs are tied on by worshippers, as people in Japan do for statues they wish to thank.
Wishes are written on wooden tablets and hung up. Here the tablets are shaped like a fox's face, and people draw the face themselves.
Chinese readers will know the fox spirit from old stories, in which it can be a helper or a seducer. In Japan too the fox can bewitch, but Inari's white foxes are on your side.
Behind the main hall the path splits into two tunnels side by side. Take the right one going up. The gates stand so close that the light comes through in orange stripes.
In the film Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) the girl Chiyo runs through this tunnel after a stranger gives her a coin, on her way to pray that she may become a geisha.
To have it almost to yourself, come before seven in the morning or after dark.
Going up you see plain red. Coming down you see writing. The left post gives the date and the right post the giver. You will read the names of banks, building firms, restaurants and families from all over Japan.
A small gate costs a few hundred thousand yen and the largest well over a million. There is a waiting list for places.
Watch for a gap, a new post still pale, or a base wrapped in tape. Somewhere on the hill a gate is always being taken out and another put in.
The two tunnels end at a small shrine from which people pray towards the hilltop. To its right stand two stone lanterns, each with a loose round stone on top.
Make a wish, guess how heavy the stone is, then lift it. If it is lighter than you thought, the wish will come true. If it is heavier, you will have to work for it.
Most visitors turn back here. The hill starts here.
Higher up the gates thin out and the forest closes in. Beside the path are thousands of stone altars crowded with small gates and foxes. Each belongs to a family or a group that worships Inari under a name of its own.
At the pond, people who have lost someone clap their hands and listen. The echo is said to come back from the direction where the missing person will be found.
Halfway up, at the crossing called Yotsutsuji, the trees open and you see Kyoto spread out below. There are tea houses here that have been run by the same families for generations.
From the crossing a loop of about forty minutes goes round the three peaks. The top, at 233 metres, has no view at all, only an altar among the trees.
At New Year more than two million people come here in three days, to make the first prayer of the year. In February comes the festival of the day the god is said to have first come down on the hill. In July the grounds are hung with thousands of red lanterns. On 8 November bonfires are lit to send the god back to the hill after the harvest.
The street leading to the shrine sells two things you will not find at most shrines. One is rice packed in a pouch of sweet fried tofu, called inari-zushi after the god. The other is whole grilled sparrow, eaten because sparrows steal rice.
The shrine was founded by the Hata, a rich clan that had come to Japan from the mainland by way of Korea some centuries before. They brought silk weaving and skill in irrigation. They wrote their name with the character for Qin, and claimed to descend from the First Emperor of Qin (221–206 BC). Historians think this was a boast.
In 711, the year of the founding, the Tang empire was at its height and Japan was copying it eagerly. The year before, Japan had moved to a new capital at Nara, laid out on the plan of the Tang (618–907) capital Chang'an.
The gate itself has cousins on the mainland, in the memorial archways of China and the red-arrow gates of Korea. Nobody has shown which came from which.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 711 | The Hata clan founds the shrine on the hill | The Tang at its height; Emperor Xuanzong takes the throne the next year |
| 794 | Kyoto becomes the capital of Japan | The Tang, forty years after the An Lushan rebellion |
| 942 | The court gives the god its highest rank | The Five Dynasties (907–960), between Tang and Song |
| 1468 | The shrine burns in the Ōnin War | The Chenghua reign of the Ming |
| 1499 | The main hall is rebuilt | The Hongzhi reign of the Ming |
| 1589 | Hideyoshi gives the tower gate | The Wanli reign; three years later Ming troops fight Hideyoshi's army in Korea |
| about 1700 | Giving gates becomes the custom | The Kangxi reign of the Qing |
| 2011 | The shrine marks 1,300 years | The year of the great earthquake in eastern Japan |
One line to remember: founded in 711 for rice, kept alive by business, and every gate is somebody's thank-you.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
A rich man of the Hata clan, Irogu, used a rice cake as a target for his arrows. The cake turned into a white bird and flew to the top of this hill, and where it landed rice grew. He built a shrine there and called it "rice growing", ine-nari, which became Inari.
Source: A record of Yamashiro province from the eighth century, known from later quotations
An old fox couple living north of Kyoto wished to serve the god and came to this hill with their five cubs. The god took them in, and since then foxes have carried Inari's messages.
Source: A medieval shrine tale
If the stone feels lighter than you guessed, your wish will be granted.
Source: Shrine custom
Clap your hands at the edge of the pond. The echo comes back from the direction in which the person you are looking for will be found.
Source: Local belief; the pond is called the Echo Pond
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. The shrine's own site, opened in November 2026, and Kyoto guides of 2026.
Checked 2026-11-12
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