Inari is one of the most widely worshipped kami of Japan, the deity of rice, agriculture and, by extension, of prosperity, business and worldly success. Tens of thousands of Inari shrines stand across the country, more than for almost any other kami, their approaches marked by rows of vivid vermilion torii gates, of which the tunnels of gates ascending the hill at the head shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha near Kyoto, are the most famous. Inari's most recognizable attendant is the fox (kitsune), the god's messenger, whose paired stone statues, often with a key or a jewel held in the mouth, flank Inari shrines, so that popular usage frequently blurs the messenger and the deity. Inari's most famous shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha south of Kyoto, has a founding date recorded as 711 CE, when the powerful Hata clan, an immigrant lineage of Korean origin, established the kami on the slopes of Mount Inari.
The foundation legend holds that Hata no Irogu set up a rice cake as an archery target; the cake transformed into a white bird, flew to the mountain's peak, and rice grew where it landed, an origin story that ties the shrine directly to Inari's oldest identity as a grain deity before the later expansion into wealth and business.