Inari Daimyōjin

Inari Daimyōjin, supporting food and livelihoods

Fushimi Inari Taisha introduces the Inari faith, in which people pray for abundant harvests of the five grains, prosperous business, safety of the household and more. Among the Thirty Guardian Kami, Inari Daimyōjin guards the twenty-second day. The shrine explains the relationship between its five enshrined kami, including Ukanomitama no Ōkami, and the broad divine virtue of Inari Ōkami.

Source: 伏見稲荷大社・伏見稲荷大社・日蓮宗 光瑞山本立寺

A rice cake becomes a bird, toward a mountain where rice grows

Fushimi Inari Taisha introduces a story from a surviving fragment of the Yamashiro no Kuni Fudoki, in which a rice cake used as an archery target turned into a white bird, and rice grew where it landed. It is the shrine's origin tradition that links rice with the name "Inari."

Source: 伏見稲荷大社

Guarding one day at a time in turn: the faith of the Thirty Guardian Kami

The Thirty Guardian Kami (Sanjū Banjin) are a faith, combining kami and buddhas, in which thirty kami divide the days among themselves to protect the country and the Buddhist teaching. In Shōhōin's list, each kami is assigned a day from the first to the thirtieth. It is a grouping handed down in the Tendai and Nichiren lineages and others, and it needs to be distinguished from present-day explanations of the enshrined kami at shrines of the same name and from historical views about the original buddhas (honjibutsu).

Source: 飛不動尊 正宝院

Kami who come to hear the sutras — the origin story told by Shinjō-ji

Shinjō-ji, a temple of the Nichiren school, introduces a tradition that while Nichiren Shōnin was reading the Lotus Sutra on Mount Hiei, a different person visited him each day and revealed himself to be one of the Thirty Guardian Kami. This is the origin story of "the Thirty Guardian Kami who protect the Lotus Sutra" as taught by that temple. This site does not treat it as a historical event shared by all faith in the Thirty Guardian Kami.

Source: 日蓮宗 玉蓮山真成寺

Protection in turns that supports daily faith

Shinjō-ji introduces the Thirty Guardian Kami as guardian deities, combining kami and buddhas, who divide their duty by the day. What the temple values is the faith that they protect the Lotus Sutra and the people who believe in its teaching. This explanation is for learning their role as the Thirty Guardian Kami, in addition to the divine virtues handed down at each shrine.

Source: 日蓮宗 玉蓮山真成寺

Related kami and buddhas

• Sanjū Banjin三十番神