The second installment of photos of fox statues taken on the Shikoku Pilgrimage.
This first one is at the Yosakoi Inari Shrine in Kochi City.
Fox (kitsune) statues will be found at Inari shrines where they serve as guardians. Inari is therefore often erroneously called the Fox God. Actually I was surprised at how few Inari shrines I found on Shikoku compared to some other areas of Japan. This one was at a small shrine in Ehime, not far from temple 40.
This one is at a sub-shrine in the grounds of Taga Shrine, a fertility shrine, in Uwajima, Ehime.
Ryukoji, the 41st temple, was originally part of an Inari Shrine, but the two were separated in 1868.
Wearing a tail-warmer, Taisanji, temple 52 near Matsuyama.
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There is a point made in a college thesis about the badgers of Shikoku that biological foxes were not native to Shikoku at some point. If this is true, maybe it impeded the propogation of the Inari cult.
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