The spirit of rice, born to Susanoo and Kamu-Oichi-hime. The Kojiki names this kami Uka-no-Mitama; the Nihon Shoki writes Uka-no-Mitama in other characters.
'Uka' is an old word for food and grain, so the name says plainly: the spirit of food.
As Inari, this kami is enshrined at more shrines than any other in Japan. Inari shrines outnumber every other dedication by a wide margin.
'Inari' is explained as rice ripening, or as carrying rice. The founding legend of Fushimi Inari tells of a rice cake used as an archery target that turned into a white bird, flew to the mountain, and made rice grow where it landed.
Inari is inseparable from foxes, but the fox is a servant of the kami, not the kami itself.
The link is credited to the fox hunting the mice that damage the fields, and so guarding the rice. That the messenger of a rice god should be the animal that hunts what eats rice follows its own logic.
Rice, food, and by extension prosperity in business. Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto is the head shrine; every gate in its thousand torii was donated by someone whose prayer was answered.
The god of rice became a god of commerce because rice was for centuries both tax and currency. In a society that measured stipends in koku of rice, grain and wealth named the same thing. The merchant houses of the Edo period, vying to install their own Inari, were following that logic.
A stick close to harvest: a branch splitting fine at the tip like an ear of grain, wood still marked where fruit or seed once hung, something picked up beside a field.
The Bureau sends this kami down on sticks that carry the shape of abundance — not a withered branch, but one that still bears some trace of having brought something to fruit.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
not yet recorded
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.