Toyokawa Inari (Myogonji Temple)

In the eastern part of Aichi, in the city that shares its name, Toyokawa Inari is one of the best-known Inari sites in the country — and one of the most misread. For all the red banners and the foxes, it is not a Shinto shrine at all, but a Zen Buddhist temple of the Soto school, properly named Myogonji. Founded in 1441, it draws some five million visitors a year, most of whom come to pray for good business and good fortune, then to walk the mound of stone foxes and the old lane of inari-zushi that runs up to the gate.

A temple that people call a shrine

The confusion has a simple root. When the priest Tōkai Gieki opened Myogonji in 1441, he set at its heart an image of the thousand-armed Kannon, and at the mountain gate he enshrined a guardian deity, Toyokawa Dakini Shinten, from an image carved by an earlier master of his line, Kangan Giin. That guardian is a Buddhist deity, but she is shown riding a white fox — and the fox is the animal of Inari, the folk worship of rice, harvest and prosperity. Over the centuries the two were drawn together, merchants of the Edo period carried the name across the country, and the temple came to be known to everyone as Toyokawa Inari. It is commonly counted among the three great Inari of Japan, though accounts differ on which the other two are. The oldest building on the grounds is the Sanmon, the mountain gate, dating from 1536 and said to have been given by the warlord Imagawa Yoshimoto; the vast main hall was completed in 1930.

Reikozuka and a thousand foxes

The sight most people remember is behind the main halls, along a path through the trees. This is Reikozuka, and here stand more than a thousand stone foxes, offered one by one over the years by worshippers giving thanks for a prayer answered. They sit in mossy ranks, large and small, some holding a scroll or a key in their mouths, their painted eyes long faded — for the fox is not the deity but her messenger, and so many of them gathered in one quiet hollow make an impression that is hard to describe and easy to remember. It costs nothing to walk among them.

The lane of inari-zushi

The way up to the gate is a monzen-machi, a temple-front town, and it is worth lingering on. Shops and stalls line the approach, and the thing to eat is the local inari-zushi — sushi rice packed into a pouch of sweet, deep-fried tofu, which shares its name with the deity and is sold here in generous variety. It is the kind of unhurried street where you buy something to eat as you walk, look at the crafts and sweets, and let the visit slow down.

Good to know

The outer gate opens early and the grounds stay open into the evening, but the main hall and inner sanctuary keep shorter hours through the middle of the day, so it is worth checking the times before a late visit. Admission is free; prayers and blessings are arranged separately, and there is paid parking near the temple. Toyokawa Inari is busiest over the New Year holidays, when huge crowds come for their first prayers of the year, and quietest on an ordinary morning. It is an easy stop by train — about a five-minute walk from either JR Toyokawa Station, on the Iida Line reached from Nagoya via Toyohashi, or Meitetsu Toyokawa-Inari Station. For another day of quiet, revered ground nearer Nagoya, see Atsuta Shrine; and in June, the hillside of Katahara Hydrangea Village, in nearby Gamagori, makes a good pairing in the same eastern corner of Aichi.