The guardian animals at Kagurazaka Bishamonten are not dogs but tigers built in the late Edo period

Guardian tiger of Kagurazaka Bishamonten

Whenever I visited a Shinto shrine, I began to pay attention to what kind of guardian dogs were waiting for me in front of the shrine building. When I was not paying attention to them, I thought that all guardian dogs were the same, but when I started to observe them, I found that they were quite different. Some of them are standing on a pedestal with dignity, some are holding a ball with their feet, and some are accompanied by small guardian dogs, which may be their offspring or children. The more I look into the world of guardian dogs, the deeper I get into the world of guardian dogs.

The Bishamonten temple in Kagurazaka has guardian dogs even though it is a temple of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. They are often associated with Shinto shrines, but this is not always the case. Moreover, the guardian animals in Bishamonten are not dogs but tigers. Guardian tigers sit in Buddhist temples. The guardian tigers were probably created in the late Edo period, when neither the Internet nor zoos existed and were probably made by people who had never seen a tiger before. It had the appearance of an animal that one would not know what it was unless one was told that it was a tiger.

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