Toyokawa City

About 75 minutes east of Nagoya, in the Mikawa Bay region, lies Toyokawa, a small city with a lot of spirituality and individuality. Though it is generally overlooked by the tourism industry as little more than a once-industrial town, it is in fact an area known locally for its rich cultural heritage, historical significance, and beautiful natural surroundings. One of the city’s prominent landmarks is the Toyokawa Inari Shrine, one of Japan’s ‘Big Three’ Inari Temples. Founded by the monk Tokai Geki in 1441, Toyokawa Inari is unusual in that it is not only a Sodo sect Buddhist temple but also a Shinto place of worship. While the combination of shrines and temples was once ordinary throughout Japan, during the Meiji era reformists decreed that places of worship were to be strictly devoted to one alone. Toyokawa Inari, however, escaped this fate, and today it retains many aspects of Buddhism as well as glorifying Inari Okami, the Shinto god of fertility, agriculture and success. As well as being the god of prosperity and agriculture, Okami Inari is also the god of foxes, which are considered to be Inari’s messenger. At Toyokawa Inari you will find thousands of fox statues of…