Direction and Shrines
Keitoku Inari Shrine and World Heritage Site 1
There is Keitoku Inari Shrine in Kitakata City. Every year, a rice planting festival is held there in early July. This year, it is on the 7th. This rice planting festival was designated as an intangible folk cultural property of Japan in 2019. It is said that this ritual began to be held in the Muromachi period, and the shrine itself was founded at the end of the Heian period by Hachiman Taro Yoshiie (Minamoto no Yoshiie), who invited a “mitama” (spirit) from Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. However, if Yoshiie’s visit to this place was to help his father, Yoriyoshi, recover the territory he lost in the Battle of Zenkunen, and if he was seeking the support he needed here, then the significance of inviting the already well-known “Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari” is fully conveyed. This is even more so when you consider that the sacred area of Fushimi Inari, Inariyama, is located in Matsumai Village (Keitoku-cho, Binshi, Kitakata City), and an Inari Shrine is still enshrined there. He built a shrine and planted a sacred tree to pray for victory in battle, and that tree is the current Osugi.
Shrine and cedar trees are inseparable. In the main shrine (Fushimi), when making a pilgrimage to Kumano in Kishu, it was already a custom in the Heian period to stop by Fushimi Inari in Fukakusa, Kyoto, to pray for safety, and to carry a cedar branch with you when you returned home. (History of Fushimi Inari Taisha)
However, cedar as a sacred tree has a much older meaning. There are cedar trees here and there along a line that crosses Honshu in a straight line from west to east, but no one has seen them yet. They are cedar trees on the 37°30′ north latitude line, and there are large cedar trees lined up from the tip of the Noto Peninsula to the southern tip of Fukushima Prefecture, so it might be a good idea to try opening a map and looking for them. It is a magnificent east-west line.
Direction has been important at shrines since ancient times. The north must have been important at Keitoku Inari Shrine. The roof decoration of the portable shrine carried during the rice planting festival features a black turtle. Black turtle is one of the four gods that symbolize the north. Incidentally, the portable shrine used in the rice planting festival at Izasumi Shrine in Aizu Misato Town features a vermilion bird, so you can see that they are very conscious of direction. Vermilion bird is the directional deity that symbolizes the south. Currently, there are special exhibitions being held at the Kitora Tomb and Takamatsuzuka Tomb in Nara, so if you go there, you will see the details at a glance.
Both can be said to be imaginary incarnations of gods in ancient China, but when we talk about Inari-sama, we are not talking about an incarnation or anything, but just a “fox.” So, what exactly is a fox? Where do the footprints left in the snowy mountains point to? Let’s think about the section again.