Fushimi Inari Kitsune Legend

The Fushimi Inari kitsune legend records the messenger-fox tradition attached to Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami, the principal deity of Fushimi Inari Taisha. In the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, Uka-no-Mitama is a grain and food deity; the fox is not the deity itself but the messenger animal, although in folk practice the spread of Inari worship led to the identification of fox and Inari deity from the medieval period onwards. According to the surviving fragment of the Yamashiro no Kuni Fudoki, the founding of Fushimi Inari is dated to the first day of the horse in the second month of Wado 4 (711), when Hata no Iroku of the Hata clan shot at a rice cake that became a white bird and flew off to the three peaks of Mount Inari; a shrine was raised on that spot. The structure has three parts: the Hata clan archery narrative and the descent of the deity on the three peaks of Mount Inari; the syncretism of Inari deity and the white fox; and the nation-wide spread of small fox-mounds and Inari shrines and the transformation into a deity of commerce. The clan worship of the immigrant Hata clan was integrated into state worship and exploded into commercial worship in the early-modern merchant households. Folk practice often identifies fox and deity, but the doctrinal position has consistently treated the fox as messenger. The setting is Fushimi Inari Taisha in Fukakusa Yabunouchi-cho, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto. Mount Inari (233 m) rises behind the main hall, with the ranks of Senbon Torii, Otsuka faith and small fox mounds forming a mountain cult. The shrine shares the Hata clan belief area with Matsunoo Taisha in Nishikyo-ku and Konoshima Niimasu Amateru Mitama Jinja (Kaiko no Yashiro) in Ukyo-ku. It is positioned as the head shrine of more than thirty thousand Inari shrines nationwide. Sources include the 'Inari-sha' entry in the surviving fragment of the Yamashiro no Kuni Fudoki (early eighth century) and the Engishiki Jinmyocho (927 CE), which lists 'Yamashiro-no-Kuni Kii-gun Inari Jinja Sanza Narabini Myojin Tai', along with the medieval Inari Daimyojin Ryuki, the early-modern Inari Taisha Engi, and fox tales in Ihara Saikaku and other Edo writers.