Inari Shrine (Niigata City)

Inari Shrine in Kuzutsuka, Niigata City

Inari Shrine (Niigata City) (稲荷神社, Inari Jinja) is a Shinto shrine in Kuzutsuka, Kita Ward, Niigata City, whose main hall and worship and offering halls rebuilt in 1815, late Edo-period mikoshi storehouse and Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on July 8, 2008.

Local guides, including the Kita Ward Tourism Association, often call it Kuzutsuka Inari Shrine (葛塚稲荷神社). Inari shrines are found all over Japan, so this site adds the city name to tell this one apart. The deity enshrined here is Ukanomitama no Mikoto, the kami of rice and harvests most closely tied to Inari worship.

For generations Inari Shrine has been the tutelary shrine of the Kuzutsuka townspeople. The stone fence (tamagaki) around the grounds was donated chiefly by the Tsurumaki family, wealthy merchants who traded as Sanjoya, and many of the guardian dogs and stone lanterns were likewise gifts from people of the town.

History of Inari Shrine (Niigata City)

Nobody knows exactly how Inari Shrine began. Working from several records, the Niigata City Kita Ward Local History Museum suggests that a small shrine stood here by around 1733 or 1734. At first it seems to have been a shrine for land reclamation kept at the residence of the Mizoguchi Takumi family, senior retainers of the Shibata domain that governed the area.

On the seventh day of the second month of 1750, Mizoguchi Tomiaki of the same family built Inari Shrine proper, and from then on it appears to have served as the guardian shrine of Kuzutsuka. The museum's signboard cites the chronicle Shoroku Nendaiki, written by Yasuda Shoroku of Shibata, whose entry for that day records the installation of the Kuzutsuka Inari shrine.

The present buildings of Inari Shrine date from a rebuilding in 1815 and were partly repaired in 2001. A plaque reading "Inari Daimyojin" on the shrine building is in the hand of Nakayama Tadayasu, maternal grandfather of Emperor Meiji. The red torii on the approach carries a second plaque, "Shoichii Inari Daimyojin," written by Odani Hikoshiro Hirotaka, who served as the shogunate's intendant at Suibara and was an uncle of Katsu Kaishu.

The four registered buildings at Inari Shrine (Niigata City)

All four were registered in the 60th round, numbered in sequence: the main hall 15-0299, the worship and offering halls 15-0300, the mikoshi storehouse 15-0301 and the Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall 15-0302. The three Inari Shrine buildings were registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the nation; the Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall was registered as a model of good design.

According to the Agency for Cultural Affairs database, the main hall was built in 1815 and covers 14 square meters. The worship and offering halls went up at about the same time, were repaired in 2001, and cover 49 square meters. The mikoshi storehouse is late Edo (1830 to 1867) and covers 21 square meters. The Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall was built in 1871 and relocated and repaired in 1969; it covers 20 square meters.

Kaichi Shrine honors three men of the Endo family, village headmen of Kuzutsuka, beginning with Endo Shichirozaemon (遠藤七郎左衛門宗寿), who worked to have the Kuzutsuka market opened. The shrine moved into the Inari Shrine grounds from Tokiwacho in 1969.

Layout of the Inari Shrine (Niigata City) grounds

The buildings of Inari Shrine face west. Standing before the worship hall, you have the offering hall directly behind it and, beyond that, the main hall. The main hall sits in the northeast corner of the precinct and is easily hidden by the worship hall when seen from the front.

The mikoshi storehouse lies south of the main hall, and the Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall stands south of the Inari Shrine worship hall, facing north. After paying your respects at the worship hall, walk round to the south side to see the flank of the main hall, then the storehouse and the Kaichi Shrine building in turn.

Festivals of Inari Shrine (Niigata City) and the Kuzutsuka Matsuri

The museum's signboard gives the festivals of Inari Shrine as April 13 and 14 in spring and September 7 and 8 in autumn. The autumn rites, held together with those of Isurugi Shrine, form the Kuzutsuka Matsuri from September 6 to 8. Night stalls fill the grounds, and on the 7th and 8th the Tamon kagura troupe performs its iremai, rushing up the approach into the shrine. On the night of the 8th, the festival closes with lanterns shoved against one another in the streets nearby.

The festival grew out of the market. On the eighth day of the tenth month of 1761, the shogunate granted permission to open the Kuzutsuka market, and Inari Shrine and Isurugi Shrine began holding rites to mark the day. Winter had already set in by the tenth lunar month, so from 1762 the dates moved to the seventh and eighth days of the eighth month. After Japan adopted the solar calendar at the end of 1872, the autumn festival of Inari Shrine settled on September 8, the date matching the old eighth day of the eighth month. The Tamon kagura is said to have begun when townspeople, overjoyed at the news brought back from the Suibara intendant's office, danced with straw rice-bale lids on their heads.

Visiting Inari Shrine (Niigata City)

The buildings of Inari Shrine (Niigata City) can be seen from within the grounds, and no admission fee is published. We found no notice of the interiors of the four registered buildings being opened to the public, and no posted rules on photography, so keep to photographing the exteriors and stay out of the way of worship and festivals.

The nearest station is Toyosaka on the JR Hakushin Line. The shrine lies southeast of the station, about 750 meters by road, or roughly a 10-minute walk. The registered address is 3293 Aza-Aioicho, Kuzutsuka, Kita-ku, Niigata City (3294-1 for the Kaichi Shrine Worship Hall). We could not confirm any parking arrangements, so public transport is the safer choice.