City of vermilion gates
Kyoto
Thousands of vermilion torii gates climb the hill behind Fushimi Inari shrine in Japan's old capital.
Why Kyoto is vermilion
Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over a thousand years. At Fushimi Inari Taisha, the chief shrine of the deity Inari, paths up the wooded hill pass through thousands of torii gates set so close they form tunnels. Each is painted vermilion, an orange-red that is the usual colour of Shinto shrine buildings. It is traditionally held to ward off evil, and the pigment, once made from the mercury mineral cinnabar, also helps protect wood. The gates are gifts from businesses and individuals, whose names are written on them in black. Elsewhere the city offers gold at Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, deep green moss gardens, and red maple leaves each November.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Kyoto
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Fushimi Inari-taisha" on Wikipedia. If you know Kyoto and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Shekhawati In: Digrajsingh, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kutch In: Zeel Satyendra Modi, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Kanchipuram In: Ssriram mt, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Auroville In: Kaspar Konrad, Public domain, source
- Fatehpur Sikri In: HibaSiddiqui, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Nara Jp: Saigen Jiro, CC0, source