Yanagimori Shrine: Going balls out in Akihabara

Most visitors to Akihabara make a beeline for Chuo-Dori, the broad boulevard lined with electronics shops, video game arcades and subcultural hideaways, populated by maids and "cosplayers" and otaku of every stripe. But if you head south from the station, just across the Kanda river you'll find a peculiar little shrine tucked off a side-street -- Yanagimori Jinja -- as the locals call it, O-Tanuki Sama Jinja ("Honorable Mister Tanuki's Shrine.")

Tanuki, small mammals that are sometimes called "racoon-dogs" in English, are common throughout the Japanese islands. Yet they also enjoy an association with wealth and luck. In Japanese folklore, tanuki are renowned for their enormous testicles, which can be magically morphed into any manner of trick, tool or disguise. Testicles are colloquially referred to as kintama in Japanese: "golden balls." The mnemonic association between balls of the reproductive sort and solid gold varieties is precisely why well-endowed statues of tanuki are such common sights in and around Japanese restaurants, depending as they do on a steady influx of money to survive. 

A view of the tiny shrine.

From lowly origins

Yanagimori Shrine was built in the late 17th century by a woman named Keisho-in, the daughter of a lowly greengrocer. As a teenager she was 'scouted' by representatives of Edo castle to join the O-oku -- the harem of women who serviced the Shogun. While this might sound like a sad fate by modern standards, in feudal times a spot in the O-oku was akin to winning the lottery for a woman. No matter how humble your origins, you were treated like royalty in the O-oku, particularly if you caught the Shogun's fancy. And Keisho-in not only caught his fancy but bore him a son -- a son that eventually became the Fifth Tokugawa Shogun, making her a powerful political figure in her own right. Not bad for a woman who had been sweeping the floor in a vegetable stand just a few decades earlier.

And this is precisely why O-Tanuki Sama Jinja remains popular even today among those looking for a little boost in their professional lives. The nickname comes from yet another mnemonic pun: "tanuki" can also be read "ta-nuki," or pulling away from the crowd, a symbol of victory. It helps that it is a charming sort of place, framed as always with a bright red Torii gate.

Testi temple

But in place of the usual komainu moondog statues that flank the gates at most shrines, there stands a pair of exquisitely sculpted stone tanuki -- with testicles of legendary scale, of course. Stepping through, the concrete of the sidewalk gives way to stepping-stones atop well-trod earth. A cherry tree shades the grounds within, flecked with uncommon yellow-tinted flowers. Here and there can be seen several more tanuki in pottery and stone. Mossy stone markers and stone lanterns list gracefully between ferns and other greenery of the sort you almost never see in the city.

Tokyo may change but shrines stay the same, and that's their charm. Even when they're home to gargantuan rodent balls.