is a shrine located in Kashima City,

Saga Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu. Saga Prefecture has a population of roughly 780,000 and has a geographic area of . Saga Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the northeast and Nagasaki Prefect ...

. It is one of the most famous Inari shrines in Japan.

History

Dedicated to Inari, the '' kami'' whose messengers are foxes, it is the third largest of its kind in Japan. It was constructed in 1688 as the family shrine of the Nabeshima clan who ruled what would become the Saga area (called Hizen at that time) during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. It was built to the Inari ''kami'' of the harvest by a princess from

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

named Manko Hime (萬子媛) who married Nabeshima Naotomo. The Nabeshima clan was entrusted with protecting Edo’s interests in Kyūshū, in particular the city of Nagasaki, which was one of the few ports open to foreign contact during Japan’s period of isolation. The shrine is also popular for new year celebrations and is very crowded during the first two weeks of January. File:Honden of Yutoku Inari Shrine.jpg File:Yutoku inari Shrine kagura-b.jpg File:「祐徳稲荷神社」楼門 - panoramio.jpg File:祐徳稲荷神社拝殿.JPG

References

Official website
(in Japanese) Shinto shrines in Saga Prefecture Inari shrines Beppyo shrines Ken-sha {{Inari Faith

History

See also

References