Every shrine has an engi — its own account of which kami is enshrined, how it came to be there, what miracle established it, and what happened in the year of the flood or the fire. These range from medieval illustrated scrolls held as treasures to a photocopied sheet in a rack by the offering box to nothing written at all, existing only in the memory of the oldest parishioner. They frequently do not agree with the national chronicles, frequently involve a Buddhist monk in the founding, and frequently record a merger with two or three other shrines during the Meiji consolidations. For understanding what any particular Shinto practice is, the engi matters far more than the Kojiki: it explains why this festival happens on this date, why the mikoshi takes that route, why the parish does not eat a particular fish. With eighty thousand shrines there are eighty thousand of these, most unstudied, and a substantial number are being lost as the parishes that carried them empty out.