1. What the Pair Is Supposed to Do at a Shrine
The statues usually stand on either side of the approach path near the entrance, or in front of the worship hall. They are treated as guardians that protect the space around the shrine's deity (a kami) from evil.[2] Their fierce faces are part of the job: the Kyoto railway company Keihan describes them as spirit beasts with a threatening look who keep evil out of the sacred ground.[3]
So guarding is clear. The harder question is why the guard is a team of two, and why the two look slightly different. The next sections follow the clues.
2. Three Clues Explain the Pair, but None Is a Proof
Here are the three clues in brief.
- An old guarding idea. Put lion-like beasts on the left and right of a sacred place. The idea came to Japan from China.[4]
- The imperial court. In the Heian period (794 to 1185), a "lion" and a "komainu" were placed as charms against evil in the court. Keihan says this is where the custom settled before spreading to shrines and temples.[3]
- A Buddhist sound. One mouth open, one closed. That comes from Buddhism, not from Shinto.[2]
These explanations fit together well, but I could not find a source that proves exactly how they combined. Some commentators also explain the pair with ideas such as yin and yang or left-and-right rank. The Japanese Wikipedia article treats those as interpretations rather than settled history.[4]
3. Why a Japanese Statue Called a "Dog" Began as a Lion
Lions do not live in Japan, yet the statues are descended from lion figures. Nippon.com says the ultimate origins of these lionlike figures probably go back to ancient India or even Egypt, but the more immediate source looks Chinese. Guardian lions were probably brought from Tang-dynasty China along with Buddhism.[2] Japanese Wikipedia adds that China had no wild lions either, so the lion image there traces back further, to the ancient Near East, where carved lions were placed beside thrones, gates and tombs.[4]
The "dog" in the name has its own puzzle. One way to write komainu means "Korean dog" (kōrai-inu), and nippon.com explains that the figures probably reached Japan by way of the Korean Peninsula. It adds that no early prototype has been found in Korea, so the name points to the route, not to the place the design was invented.[2] Japanese Wikipedia notes that other explanations for the name also exist.[4]
4. The Pair Was a Lion Plus a "Komainu," Not Two Identical Lions
Here is a detail that surprises many people. Strictly speaking, the pair was once made of two different creatures. The Japanese word shishi means lion, and a komainu was its partner. Japanese Wikipedia describes the usual difference this way: the lion has no horn, and the komainu has a single horn.[4] Over time the word "komainu" came to name both statues, and in many places the two now look nearly the same. Japanese Wikipedia also says that statues which follow this horn rule are far from universal.[4]
The Cultural Agency of Japan's online database gives a real example. It describes a pair of wooden statues at Hakusan-hime Shrine in Ishikawa Prefecture, dated to the late Heian period and designated an Important Cultural Property. The open-mouthed one is described as the lion, the closed-mouthed one as the komainu, and the komainu has a single horn. Both are made of Japanese cypress, joined from many blocks of wood.[1]
That same entry says something useful about old statues in general: guardian pairs have been made since the Heian period, but surviving ones from that era are very rare. The entry says this is partly because, as gate-guardian figures, they were placed at the edge of a building, such as an upper veranda, rather than inside it.[1] Japanese Wikipedia adds that older ones were often kept indoors, which is one reason most Heian and Kamakura-period survivors are wooden.[4] The stone statues you meet outdoors today are a later habit.
5. Why One Mouth Is Open and the Other Is Closed
Now to the mouths. Most modern pairs show one statue with its mouth open and one with its mouth shut. Nippon.com explains that this tradition comes from Buddhist imagery, not Shinto. It stands for a sacred sound written in English as "a-un" (or "aum"): the "a" comes from the open mouth and the "um" from closed lips.[2]
You can find the same open-and-closed pair at many Buddhist temple gates, in the muscular guardian figures called Niō. Keihan says that in the Heian period, as Buddhism spread, the guardian pair took on the same open-and-closed expressions as the Niō, along with the horn on one of them, and became a Japanese style of its own.[3]
The open-mouthed "a" statue is often described as standing for the beginning of all things, and the closed-mouthed "um" statue for the end, so together they mean everything from start to finish.[5] That reading is also why two works better than one: a single statue can only show an open mouth or a closed mouth, but a pair can say both.
Which side is which? Sources do not agree. Keihan says the lion is generally on the right as you face the shrine,[3] while Japanese Wikipedia says the open-mouthed one is often on the viewer's right.[4] Those two are not the same rule, and shrines differ, so check each one yourself.
6. Some Shrines Replace the Lion-Dog With the Deity's Own Animal
At some shrines you will not find lion-dogs at all. Nippon.com lists a few: at Mitsumine Shrine in Saitama Prefecture, two wolves stand guard for the wolf deity. Inari shrines have foxes, Tenmangū shrines have oxen, and Hie Sannō Shrine in Tokyo has monkeys.[2]
Look at what stays the same: two animals, placed on either side of the approach. Only the animal changes. This is my own way of connecting the sources, not a documented history: the lion-dog may have set a pattern that shrines then filled with their own deity's animal.
7. How to Look at Guardian Pairs Near You
If you visit a shrine, treat the statues as evidence.
- Which mouth is open? Is there a horn on either one?
- Are the manes and tails the same on both, or different?
- Do they face each other, or do both look at you?
- Does the base carry a date or a donor's name?
Compare two or three shrines and write down where the "rules" in this article hold and where they break. Please look from the ground: do not climb on the statues or touch them more than needed.
If you want to read an original source, the Cultural Agency's online database has entries on wooden pairs from the Heian and Kamakura periods, and its text shows which features specialists look at when they date a statue.[1]