The first time I traced the seven Masakado sites on a paper map, connecting them in the order I’d visited them, I did what apparently everyone who tries this eventually does. I sat back and looked at the shape. It was the Big Dipper. Or close enough to it that I couldn’t stop seeing it…
Japan’s oldest rabbit story, and what it left behind There is a book called the Kojiki(古事記) — compiled over thirteen hundred years ago, one of the oldest books in existence. It is a remarkable read: part history, part mythology, a record of the age when gods walked the earth and Japan itself was still taking…
On moons, battlefields, shrines, and why I keep collecting rabbits THE RABBIT PROBLEM I collect rabbit things. Over the years, I have come to understand that Japanese rabbit symbolism is far richer than I ever imagined. Shrine charms, ceramics, textiles, small objects with no practical purpose whatsoever — anything marked by the presence of a rabbit. Living…
Japanese zodiac animals are not quite the same as those in China, and the differences tell a much deeper cultural story. Japan loves cats. Which makes one thing rather strange. Cat cafés line the backstreets of Tokyo. Lucky cat statues beckon from shop entrances. Neighbourhoods quietly look after the cats that live among them —…
The first thing that stopped me at Chiba Shrine was not the deity. It was the building. In the weeks before I visited, I had kept encountering references to the shrine. Articles appeared in my recommendations. Social media posts mentioned it repeatedly. People sometimes say that when a shrine keeps appearing in your life, it…
On my desk sits a small figure holding a sword. It is a statue of Fudō Myōō — one of Buddhism’s most fierce-looking deities, typically depicted surrounded by flames, wielding a blade, his expression a deliberate and concentrated fury. The figure on my desk is about ten centimetres tall. It is also a rabbit. The…
In the centre of Tokyo, in Otemachi — one of Japan’s most expensive districts, in the shadow of the Imperial Palace and surrounded by the headquarters of major corporations — there is a gap. The land here is among the most valuable in Japan. The site itself is modest in size, but its estimated value…
The first time I visited Kanda Myojin, I was a university student with a free afternoon. A class had been cancelled, and a friend suggested we go. Even though I was studying at a university in Ochanomizu — walking distance from Kanda Myojin — I had no idea the shrine was even there. I remember…
There are more than 30,000 Inari shrines in Japan. That figure — more than any other type of shrine — suggests a kami that has woven itself into the fabric of ordinary life. Inari shrines appear in city neighbourhoods, tucked between office buildings, at the edges of residential streets, inside the grounds of larger shrines….
The headquarters of all Inari shrines in Japan — the sōhonsha, the original source — is Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, a shrine that has been in continuous existence since 711 CE. That is over 1,300 years. It predates most of what we think of as “historical” in the Western sense. Many visitors to Fushimi…
