Inu no Miya: Once a Beloved Dog Shrine, Now Empty

When I first read about Inu no Miya in the book Hono Hyakkei, I was incredibly moved. According to the book, this shrine was originally built to honor a dog that had saved its masters. But over time, this tiny shrine in the middle of nowhere became a place of solace for dog owners who have lost their trusted companions. People pinned photos of their pets and tied their used leashes as a way to commemorate them. That is, until late 2021 when the managers of the shrine decided to ban the practice.

A Dog Named Cholo

My desire to go to Inu no Miya was fueled by one unexpected incident that happened on the set of NHK’s Cool Japan. We were filming an episode with the theme “Pets” and the last segment was about people holding funerals for the pets they lost. It brought a few members of the cast in tears, including me, who tried to hold it together but unfortunately crumbled at the sight of people mourning their pets.

You see, this grief was familiar. My family back in the Philippines had dogs and cats as pets and I grew up with them. That meant I was also used to them passing away; their life spans are shorter than humans after all. One dog that I still miss to this day is Cholo, a huge brown dog that never ran out of love to give. Cholo was with me through some of the darkest times of my life, through times that felt like he was one of the very few things that kept me from falling apart.

When I left the Philippines for Japan, I had to leave Cholo behind. He was my mum’s dog first and foremost, so I knew he’d be okay as long as he had my mum to follow around. It wasn’t until some years later that he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. By then, I had been in Japan for a long time, but the news of his passing was still painful. I was going through another difficult phase then, and the mounting sorrows became difficult to parse and process.

So when I did the shoot for Cool Japan, the grief that I had left unprocessed came flooding back to me. On the train home from the shoot, I kept crying in silence, trying not to disturb other people as I did. Even as I got home, I couldn’t stop crying, and it was then that I realized that I never truly got to mourn the loss of a beloved pet. It was high time I did, so I decided to hold my own ceremony, to travel to Yamagata and honor Cholo’s life at Inu no Miya, the shrine for deceased dogs.

All the Way to Yamagata for Nothing

It was winter when I decided to make my trip. I printed a photo of Cholo—one of the few ones I snapped on a low-tech phone—and carried it in my wallet as I boarded the bullet train to Yamagata. Unlike Tokyo, Yamagata was deep in snow during this time. It was night when I arrived, so I checked into my hotel and prepared to visit the shrine in the morning.

As I was checking my route to the shrine, the latest review on Google Maps caught my eye. The shrine photos showed no pictures of pets or pet memorabilia. It was, in all sense of the word, empty.

As I read on, my fears were confirmed. Someone had written that the management of the shrine had decided to take down the photos and left a note saying that visitors are no longer allowed to pin photos or tie leashes. If visitors wanted to leave something, they had to put them in the fruit crates placed on one side. To be honest, the crates looked like open trash cans.

Despite seeing the review, I made my journey to the shrine the next morning, hoping, perhaps, that there’d been a change. I was deep in the countryside and as much as I wanted to ride a cab to my destination, there weren’t any, and I had to make the journey on foot. It was a one-hour walk in the snow, definitely not the easiest of walks, but I powered through thinking that this was my way of mourning my loss.

Alas, when I arrived at the shrine, it was as the review had described. No photos, just stacked crates that looked too shabby to hold offerings. I didn’t place the photo I printed in the crates. Instead, I simply bowed and clapped my hands to pay respects and uttered a prayer for the dog I sorely miss.

What’s a Shrine for, Really?

Although the journey helped me process my grief, the shrine itself was disappointing. As I mentioned in the video above, there are many shrines in Japan where people leave objects as offerings. The custom is a symbolic cleansing, a way of parting with intense emotions and giving them up to the gods.

In fact, more often than not, it is these offerings, these dedications, that attract visitors. People leave cucumbers at Kappabuchi, tie pink ribbons on sakura trees at Sakura Jingu, and draw faces on votive plaques at Kawai Shrine. Having a custom unique to the shrine gives it an identity of its own.

And yet, whoever took over Inu no Miya (and its sister shrine for cats called Neko no Miya) seems to treat these offerings as trash, as if the people who left photos and memorabilia were littering in public. That is hardly the case. These were treasured items that people wanted to leave in the care of the divine, at least symbolically.

I believe that when a shrine fails to accommodate people’s prayers, it loses its function. Because what makes a shrine a place of worship in the first place? It is the gods that supposedly dwell in them? Or the people who willingly believe and place their faith?

How to Get to Inu no Miya

Inu no Miya (犬の宮)
Open 24 Hours
10-minute drive from JR Takahata Station