What it is
The head shrine of the Inari faith, founded in 711 at the foot of Mount Inari in the south of the city, and the origin of thousands of Inari shrines across Japan.
Inari is the kami of rice, and therefore of harvests, and therefore — by a very Japanese extension — of commercial success. The foxes everywhere are the messengers, not the god.
The torii, and who paid for them
⭐ The senbon torii — the thousand gates — are not a decorative scheme. Each one is a votive offering from a company or an individual, and if you look at the back of any upright you will find the donor's name and the date it was given cut into the wood. The tunnel is a ledger.
They run in a continuous corridor up the mountainside, so dense in places that the light through them goes orange.
How far to go
The full circuit of the mountain is a real walk — several kilometres, a great many steps, and a genuine climb. Most people go as far as the Yotsutsuji junction, where the trees open onto a view back over the city, and turn round.
⭐ The crowd thins sharply above the first few hundred metres. Almost everyone stops at the photogenic stretch near the bottom; twenty minutes further up you can be alone.
