Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto traces its founding to 711 CE and the Hata clan, immigrants from the Korean Peninsula who brought irrigation, silk farming, and sake brewing to Yamashiro province. The founding myth in the Fudoki tells of Hata no Irogu shooting an arrow at a rice cake that turned into a white bird, flew to the peak of Mount Inari, and made rice grow where it landed. The clan’s private guardian deity was elevated by the imperial court into a national protector of the harvest. The shrine was relocated in 816 at the request of the monk Kukai, its main hall dates to 1499, and its two-story Romon gate was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Trails run about four kilometers up the 233 meter mountain.

During the Edo period, from 1603 to 1868, businesses began donating vermilion torii gates in thanks for answered prayers, with their names carved into the pillars. About 10,000 now line the mountain, including roughly 800 in the tightly packed Senbon Torii. Fox messengers called kitsune guard the paths, often holding the key to the rice granary. The shrine keeps its sacred mirror in open view, and ordinary worshippers have built tens of thousands of personal stone altars. Through ritual division of the deity, some 32,000 Inari subshrines now exist across Japan.

• Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto walked through the gates and drew on them for the Star Fox series
• In 965 CE Emperor Murakami made Fushimi Inari one of the original 16 shrines to receive written reports on state affairs
• From 1871 to 1946 it held the top rank of government-supported shrines, Kanpei Taisha
• Police counted 2.69 million visitors in the first three days of the 2006 New Year
• Tsujiura senbei, fortune crackers sold near the shrine, are traced as the origin of the American fortune cookie