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"On this day," says the Ô-Satsuyô, a Japanese cyclopædia, "at Yedo, where there are myriads upon myriads of shrines to Inari Sama, there are all sorts of ceremonies. Long banners with inscriptions are erected, lamps and lanterns are hung up, and the houses are decked with various dolls and figures; the sound of flutes and drums is heard, the people dance and make holiday according to their fancy.
These ofuda are from the great Inari temple of Oshiroyama, within the castle grounds, and are charms against fire. They represent, indeed, the only form of assurance against fire yet known in Matsue, so far, at least, as wooden dwellings are concerned.
While diverting himself with this spectacle, and trying to play his part by springing nimbly from one branch to another, he missed his footing and broke his neck in the fall. But these strange beliefs are swiftly passing away. Year by year more shrines of Inari crumble down, never to be rebuilt. Year by year the statuaries make fewer images of foxes.
Now, the boy who had recovered through the efficacy of this medicine selected the prettiest spot on the premises to erect a shrine to Inari Sama, the Fox God, and offered sacrifice to the two old foxes, for whom he purchased the highest rank at court of the Mikado. The Black Horse
Then, if you look into the temple you will see on the left something like a long low table on which are placed thousands of tiny fox-images, even smaller than those in the doorway, having only plain white tails. There is no image of Inari; indeed, I have never seen an image of Inari as yet in any Inari temple.
Inasmuch as rice is the most important and necessary product of Japan, the honours which Inari Sama receives are extraordinary.
And at the time of the great festival of the Rice-God, when the city is usually thronged by farmers coming to worship at the many shrines of Inari this year there came but few; and the loss to local commerce was estimated at several thousand yen.
But the peasantry in Izumo, like the peasantry of Catholic Europe, make mythology for themselves. If asked whether they pray to Inari as to an evil or a good deity, they will tell you that Inari is good, and that Inari-foxes are good.
Then she hung the quilts over poles to sun, dusted the screens, and placed an offering of rice on the steps of the tiny shrine to Inari, where the little foxes kept guard. These simple duties being accomplished, she tied a bit of bean-cake in her gaily colored handkerchief, and stepping into her geta, went pattering off to school.
And it is only in modern art the art of Toyokuni and others that Inari is represented as a bearded man riding a white fox. Inari is not worshipped as the God of Rice only; indeed, there are many Inari just as in antique Greece there were many deities called Hermes, Zeus, Athena, Poseidon one in the knowledge of the learned, but essentially different in the imagination of the common people.
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