placesFushimi Inari-taisha伏見稲荷大社
said foo-shee-mee EE-na-ree TIGH-sha
also: Fushimi Inari Shrine · Oinari-san
The head shrine of Inari, at the foot of a 233-metre mountain in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto. Paths climb four kilometres to smaller shrines, roofed most of the way by torii gates — roughly 10,000 of them, each one paid for by a Japanese business, about 800 set close enough together to make a tunnel. Tens of thousands of rock altars, otsuka, stand along the way, set up by private people and cut with their own names for Inari.
citedWhen
711 CE to now still carried cited
| Period | Nara to the present |
|---|---|
| How the date is known | textual — a dated text describes it |
| Note | The traditional foundation date; the earliest structures are dated to 711 on Inariyama, with a relocation in 816 and the main structure built in 1499. |
Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.
The story
The shrine was formally founded in 711 CE by the Hata clan, immigrants from the Korean peninsula who brought irrigation, sericulture and sake brewing into Yamashiro. The Yamashiro fudoki tells it as an arrow, a rice cake that turned into a white bird, and rice growing where the bird came down. Inari began as the kami of rice and agriculture and stays that; merchants took Inari up as the patron of business, which is why the gates are donated by companies.
Donating a torii to have a wish granted, or in thanks for one granted, spread from the Edo period onward and has not stopped. Unlike most Shinto shrines, this one leaves the main object of worship — a mirror — in open view. Foxes stand at the gates as Inari's messengers, often with a granary key in the mouth.
The shrine was in the first rank of state-supported shrines from 1871 to 1946. Police counted 2.69 million worshippers over three days of the new year in 2006, the largest count in western Japan. Around 32,000 branch shrines carry Inari elsewhere in the country.
On the approach, sweet shops sell tsujiura senbei, a folded fortune cracker documented at least to the 19th century and argued to be the ancestor of the American fortune cookie.
Inference — an omamori bought at a shrine gate is the shrine's own object, and a head shrine of this size is one of the places the practice runs at scale. This atlas has read no published stock list for this shrine's own counter, so the charm records below are linked as kin rather than as inventory.
Now
Open, with no entrance fee. The approach and the main hall are lit all night.
Where
Kyoto, Fushimi-ku · 34.9672, 135.7728 precision: exact cited
the coordinate published in the English Wikipedia article Fushimi Inari-taisha, read 2026-09-16
MoTuWeThFrSaSu
Open 24 hours; the approach and the main hall are illuminated all night. No entrance fee.
Filled = open, outlined = closed, blank = nobody published it. A blank stays a blank.
What is on record about it
- Free to enter — the article states there is no entrance fee; this project has not read the shrine's own admissions page cited
- A pilgrimage site — a four-kilometre mountain circuit of sub-shrines and rock altars, walked by millions at the new year cited
What this is near
What names this one
Each in its own words, from its own page.
Where this came from
- Fushimi Inari-taisha — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- Omamori — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
- O-mikuji — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Elsewhere
Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.