A Wolf Shrine

I've been doing more reading on Japanese Wolves.

It seems they were opportunistic predators sometimes preying on humans and their horses and yet sometimes tolerating human presence. There's a belief that at least one Japanese dog breed is part Wolf and reported sightings of this officially extinct species are probably of feral dogs with wolf genes.

The stories vary from place to place however in one special place nearly lost there is a whole shrine ceiling covered with paintings of wolves.

The Yamatsumi shrine up in Fukushima was damaged by a fire a few years back but fortunately someone had photographed the ceiling art and and a group of scholars and painters got together to restore the paintings when the shrine was rebuilt.

The wolf lives on in spirit and art !

Fox or Wolf ?

#ukiyo-e #japanesewolf #wolf #fox #japaneseprint

This is one of the #Yoshitoshi print sereis called 100 Aspects of the Moon in English.

I have often see the animal in this print identified as a fox however recently I have discovered it is not a gray fox but the probably extinct Japanese Wolf. Yoshitoshi was probably working of a fur or older pictures and had never seen a live wolf. Also Japanese wolves regardless of what you see in a certain #miyazaki film seem to have been rather small and slender and shy canids. They rarely seem to have attacked humans in Japan but tradition suggests they might follow humans walking by night and they were often thought of as protective spirits possibly because like foxes they might prey on herbivores that damaged crops.

This print suggests hostile intentions but given its a Heian aristo may simply be a legend based on some overtly sensitive poet encountering wolves courting and howling at the moon.

Here's a statute of a wolf at one of the last remaining shrines where they are honored as guardian spirits and servants of Oguchinomakami .

It looks like a modern copy of an older work to me.

There are said to be 20 wolf god SHINTO shrines but I've only found info about a copy of them.
I'll share more of what scraps I've found in the next post!