Toyokawa Inari

The temple was founded in 1441 by a Buddhist priest named Tōkai Gieki (東海義易), whose distant predecessor, Kangan Giin had studied Tantric Buddhism in Song Dynasty, China .[1] Per his teachings, Juichimen Kannon was identified as an avatar of the Toyokawa Dakinishinten,[2] who is depicted in Japanese Buddhist iconography as a female deity riding on a white fox. In the period of Shinbutsu shūgō, the line between Buddhism and Shinto was blurred, and images of a goddess on a fox were associated with Ukanomitama-no-mikoto, the goddess of agriculture, who used the white fox as her messenger.[3]

The temple was patronized in the Sengoku period by Imagawa Yoshimoto, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and by pilgrims from the merchant classes in the Edo period through the modern period.

Most of the temple was rebuilt in the Meiji period or later; however, the Sanmon dates from 1536 and is the oldest existent buildings in the complex. The Main Hall was reconstructed in the Tempo period (1830-1843), and several other buildings also date from the Edo period. In terms of registered cultural properties, the temple has a wooden Kamakura period statue of Jizō Bosatsu which is a National Important Cultural Property.

The Toyokawa Inari combines with the Mino Thirty-three Kannon in Gifu Prefecture, the Owari Thirty-three Kannon in western Aichi Prefecture, and the Mikawa Thirty-three Kannon (三河三十三観音) in eastern Aichi Prefecture to form a pilgrimage route known as the Tōkai Hundred Kannon.[4]

• Inari Shrine
• Tōkai Hundred Kannon
  • Mino Thirty-three Kannon
  • Owari Thirty-three Kannon
• Glossary of Japanese Buddhism
• Glossary of Shinto

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Toyokawa Inari.

• Smyers, Karen Ann. The fox and the jewel: shared and private meanings in contemporary Japanese. University of Hawaii Press (1998). ISBN 0-8248-2102-5