By every shady wayside and in every ancient grove, on almost every
hilltop and in the outskirts of every village, you may see, while
travelling through the Hondo country, some little Shinto shrine, before
which, or at either side of which, are images of seated foxes in stone.
Usually there is a pair of these, facing each other. But there may be a
dozen, or a score, or several hundred, in which case most of the images
are very small. 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. After having travelled much in
Japan, you will find that whenever you try to recall any country-place
you have visited, there will appear in some nook or corner of that
remembrance a pair of green-and-grey foxes of stone, with broken noses.
In my own memories of Japanese travel, these shapes have become de
rigueur, as picturesque detail.
In the neighbourhood of the capital and in Tokyo itself--sometimes in
the cemeteries--very beautiful idealised figures of foxes may be seen,
elegant as greyhounds. They have long green or grey eyes of crystal
quartz or some other diaphanous substance; and they create a strong
impression as mythological conceptions. But throughout the interior,
fox-images are much less artistically fashioned. In Izumo, particularly,
such stone-carving has a decidedly primitive appearance. There is an
astonishing multiplicity and variety of fox-images in the Province of
the Gods--images comical, quaint, grotesque, or monstrous, but, for the
most part, very rudely chiselled. I cannot, however, declare them less
interesting on that account. The work of the Tokkaido sculptor copies
the conventional artistic notion of light grace and ghostliness. The
rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray
in countless queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are
of many moods--whimsical, apathetic, inquisitive, saturnine, jocose,
ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and sneer; they
wait with lurking smiles; they listen with cocked ears most stealthily,
keeping their mouths open or closed. There is an amusing individuality
about them all, and an air of knowing mockery about most of them, even
those whose noses have been broken off. Moreover, these ancient country
foxes have certain natural beauties which their modern Tokyo kindred
cannot show. Time has bestowed upon them divers speckled coats of
beautiful soft colours while they have been sitting on their pedestals,
listening to the ebbing and flowing of the centuries and snickering
weirdly at mankind. Their backs are clad with finest green velvet of old
mosses; their limbs are spotted and their tails are tipped with the
dead gold or the dead silver of delicate fungi. And the places they most
haunt are the loveliest--high shadowy groves where the uguisu sings in
green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions
of stone so mossed as to seem things born of the soil--like mushrooms.
I found it difficult to understand why, out of every thousand foxes,
nine hundred should have broken noses. The main street of the city of
Matsue might be paved from end to end with the tips of the noses of
mutilated Izumo foxes. A friend answered my expression of wonder in this
regard by the simple but suggestive word, 'Kodomo', which means, 'The
children.'
Sec. 2.
Inari the name by which the Fox-God is generally known, signifies
'Load-of-Rice.' But the antique name of the Deity is the
August-Spirit-of-Food: he is the Uka-no-mi-tama-no-mikoto of the Kojiki.
[1] In much more recent times only has he borne the name that indicates
his connection with the fox-cult, Miketsu-no-Kami, or the Three-Fox-God.
Indeed, the conception of the fox as a supernatural being does not seem
to have been introduced into Japan before the tenth or eleventh century;
and although a shrine of the deity, with statues of foxes, may be found
in the court of most of the large Shinto temples, it is worthy of
note that in all the vast domains of the oldest Shinto shrine in
Japan--Kitzuki--you cannot find the image of a fox. And it is only in
modern art--the art of Toyokuni and others--that Inari is represented as
a bearded man riding a white fox. [2]
Inari is not worshipped as the God of Rice only; indeed, there are many
Inari just as in antique Greece there were many deities called Hermes,
Zeus, Athena, Poseidon--one in the knowledge of the learned, but
essentially different in the imagination of the common people. Inari
has been multiplied by reason of his different attributes. For instance,
Matsue has a Kamiya-San-no-Inari-San, who is the God of Coughs and Bad
Colds--afflictions extremely common and remarkably severe in the Land
of Izumo. He has a temple in the Kamachi at which he is worshipped
under the vulgar appellation of Kaze-no-Kami and the politer one of
Kamiya-San-no-Inari. And those who are cured of their coughs and colds
after having prayed to him, bring to his temple offerings of tofu.
At Oba, likewise, there is a particular Inari, of great fame. Fastened
to the wall of his shrine is a large box full of small clay foxes. The
pilgrim who has a prayer to make puts one of these little foxes in his
sleeve and carries it home. He must keep it, and pay it all due honour,
until such time as his petition has been granted. Then he must take it
back to the temple, and restore it to the box, and, if he be able, make
some small gift to the shrine.
Inari is often worshipped as a healer; and still more frequently as a
deity having power to give wealth. (Perhaps because all the wealth
of Old Japan was reckoned in koku of rice.) Therefore his foxes are
sometimes represented holding keys in their mouths. And from being the
deity who gives wealth, Inari has also become in some localities the
special divinity of the joro class. There is, for example, an Inari
temple worth visiting in the neighbourhood of the Yoshiwara at Yokohama.
It stands in the same court with a temple of Benten, and is more
than usually large for a shrine of Inari. You approach it through a
succession of torii one behind the other: they are of different heights,
diminishing in size as they are placed nearer to the temple, and planted
more and more closely in proportion to their smallness. Before each
torii sit a pair of weird foxes--one to the right and one to the left.
The first pair are large as greyhounds; the second two are much smaller;
and the sizes of the rest lessen as the dimensions of the torii lessen.
At the foot of the wooden steps of the temple there is a pair of very
graceful foxes of dark grey stone, wearing pieces of red cloth about
their necks. Upon the steps themselves are white wooden foxes--one at
each end of each step--each successive pair being smaller than the pair
below; and at the threshold of the doorway are two very little foxes,
not more than three inches high, sitting on sky-blue pedestals. These
have the tips of their tails gilded. Then, if you look into the temple
you will see on the left something like a long low table on which are
placed thousands of tiny fox-images, even smaller than those in the
doorway, having only plain white tails. There is no image of Inari;
indeed, I have never seen an image of Inari as yet in any Inari temple.
On the altar appear the usual emblems of Shinto; and before it, just
opposite the doorway, stands a sort of lantern, having glass sides and
a wooden bottom studded with nail-points on which to fix votive candles.
[3]
And here, from time to time, if you will watch, you will probably
see more than one handsome girl, with brightly painted lips and the
beautiful antique attire that no maiden or wife may wear, come to the
foot of the steps, toss a coin into the money-box at the door, and call
out: 'O-rosoku!' which means 'an honourable candle.' Immediately, from
an inner chamber, some old man will enter the shrine-room with a lighted
candle, stick it upon a nail-point in the lantern, and then retire.
Such candle-offerings are always accompanied by secret prayers for
good-fortune. But this Inari is worshipped by many besides members of
the joro class.
The pieces of coloured cloth about the necks of the foxes are also
votive offerings.