Feb 23, 2014 - 1 min read

Shigaraki

Town of the tanuki statues

By Cathy Cawood

Community writer

The small local train is decorated with tanuki

Giant tanuki and public phone outside the JR station

This tanuki looks ready to set off on a journey

This reclining tanuki has a noodle restaurant inside!

There is a lot of beautiful pottery for sale in Shigaraki

Tanuki statues often hold flasks of sake

Shigaraki is a small pottery town in the middle of Shiga's countryside, but it is a town with a long and interesting history. Shigaraki became the Imperial capital for a few months in the year 745, but the Imperial court moved after the palace was burned down in a forest fire. However the really curious thing about Shigaraki is that everywhere you look there are cute pottery raccoon dogs known as tanuki.There seems to be a number of interesting stories about these tanuki. For example, once when the emperor visited the town the local people were concerned that they were too few in number to provide a rousing welcome for their illustrious guest, so they got the idea of lining up hundreds of tanuki on the sides of the road. I bet that made the emperor smile!

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By Cathy Cawood

Community writer

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Bonson Lam 10 years ago

Shigaraki is a little gem between Nagoya and Kyoto on the Shin Meishin motorway, making this a great stop for your New Year holidays!

Justin Velgus 11 years ago

It is all fun and games during the daytime, but it looks like this town can get a little scary after dark!

Anonymous 11 years ago

While the rest of my family thinks they are fearsome or gross, I've always had a fascination with tannuki statues and set about several years ago to try to find the best place to buy one. Never did get a satisfying source, and the selection of those online at Rakuten are really disappointing -- mostly cheap-looking and with the same boring expression. Soooo, Cathy has done a great service by identifying not just a single factory but in fact an entire town dedicated to recreating tannuki tengoku in the world of humans. Definitely going to put Shiragaki on my list of places to go!

3 comments in total