Inari is the Shinto kami of rice, fertility, tea, sake, and industry -- a deity so popular that roughly one-third of all registered shrines in Japan are dedicated to this single divine figure. At Takekoma, the primary enshrined kami is traditionally identified with Inari and associated specifically with agriculture and rice production. Secondary deities include the goddess of food and the god of the five cereals, making this a shrine that covers the full spectrum of sustenance. Several smaller subsidiary shrines dot the forested grounds, each tended and visited on its own seasonal calendar. The foxes that guard the pathways are not gods themselves but divine messengers, intermediaries between the human and spiritual worlds, and their scattered presence across the shrine grounds gives the whole complex the feeling of being perpetually observed.

The shrine's origin story reaches back to the early Heian period. Ono no Takamura, serving as kokushi -- provincial governor -- of Oshu, reportedly founded Takekoma in 842 AD as a branch of Kyoto's Fushimi Inari, the oldest and grandest of all Inari shrines. The Heian-period poet Noin mentioned the shrine during the reign of Emperor Go-Reizei, placing its literary record in the mid-eleventh century. During the warring Sengoku period, the local warlord Date Tanemune awarded the shrine an estate, binding Takekoma's fortunes to the powerful Date clan. That patronage deepened under the Date lords of Sendai Domain, who supported the shrine through the entire Edo period. When the Meiji government restructured Shinto worship in the nineteenth century, Takekoma was ranked as a Prefectural Shrine -- an official acknowledgment of a status the faithful had recognized for a millennium.

The shrine's main hall, the Honden, was a structure built by Date Yoshimura, the fifth daimyo of Sendai Domain. It stood for centuries until November 21, 1990, when fire consumed it entirely. The rebuilding took four years, and the new Honden was completed in 1994 -- a reminder that Japanese sacred architecture lives not in permanence but in renewal. The oldest surviving structure on the grounds is the Zuishinmon, a two-story gate tower built in 1812. Registered as an Important Cultural Property of Iwanuma City, the gate's weathered timbers and elaborate joinery speak to two centuries of coastal Tohoku winters. The shrine also houses a horsemanship museum, an unexpected treasure that reflects the region's deep equestrian traditions.

Every year, approximately 1.6 million visitors pass through Takekoma's gates, but the shrine pulses with its greatest energy during the Hatsuuma Grand Festival. Held for seven days beginning on the first horse day of the second month of the traditional lunisolar calendar -- typically falling on a Sunday in February or early March -- the festival draws an estimated quarter-million attendees in a single week. They come to pray for a bountiful harvest, to purchase fox-themed charms and amulets, and to participate in rituals that have barely changed since the Heian court. The September festival provides a second annual peak. Between these celebrations, Takekoma settles back into quiet contemplation, the fox messengers standing patient vigil over the rice paddies of Iwanuma as they have since the ninth century.