The myth of Takeminakata-no-Kami contrasts submission through words with resistance through strength. In the Kuni-yuzuri segment, Kotoshironushi-no-Kami follows the intention of Okuninushi-no-Kami and agrees to surrender Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni. On the other hand, Takeminakata-no-Kami challenges Takemikazuchi-no-Kami to a test of strength. He is defeated by his opponent's divine power, which turned his hand into ice and swords, and flees to the Sea of Suwa in Shinano Province. Kokugakuin introduces a theory that views this subjugation as the surrender of political and military ruling power^[1]. If Kotoshironushi-no-Kami demonstrates ritualistic submission, Takeminakata-no-Kami bears another aspect of territorial rule through armed resistance and defeat.

However, in Suwa, this defeat is retold not as an end, but as a beginning. The official history of Suwa Taisha states that Takeminakata-no-Kami, who opposed the transfer of the land, moved from Izumo to Suwa, positioning him as the deity who built and ruled Shinano Province—the Suwa nation that began from Kuni-yuzuri^[2]. Kokugakuin further shows that the *Suwa Daimyojin Ekotoba* narrates Takeminakata-no-Kami as a god who enshrined himself after defeating Moriya-no-Kami. Here, Takeminakata-no-Kami is not a fugitive, but a foreign god who integrates the region as Suwa Daimyojin while clashing with the old local gods and ritual systems of Suwa.

The Suwa faith strongly retains an ancient stratum that reveres nature itself as a divine body. It is officially explained that Suwa Taisha does not have a main sanctuary, transmitting a form of faith where nature is the object of worship—having no honden, nature itself is the goshintai^[3]. Therefore, Takeminakata-no-Kami is not so much an anthropomorphic god closed in the depths of a shrine building, but a deity felt in the movements of mountains, lakes, winds, rains, the Onbashira pillars, sacred trees, and ice. The Omiwatari (God's Crossing) of Lake Suwa is a phenomenon where the ice cracks and bulges like a mountain range when the lake freezes over completely. Nagano Prefecture transmits this as the path taken by Takeminakata-no-Mikoto of the Kamisha to visit Yasakatome-no-Mikoto of the Shimosha^[4]. This path of ice also becomes a divine ritual to divine the year's crops, social conditions, and climate rainfall.

Beliefs surrounding hunting and meat-eating also make Takeminakata-no-Kami a deity very characteristic of Suwa. Suwa Taisha explains that even in eras when taking life was abhorred, the people of Suwa were granted a divine talisman and permitted to eat venison to survive—permitted to eat venison^[3]. This is not a mere indulgence; it is a philosophy where the deity assumes responsibility for the cycle of life between the livelihood of a mountain province and Buddhist taboos. The split-eared deer of the Onto Festival, listed among the Seven Wonders in the official history, and the frog-hunting ritual transmitted by the Suwa City Museum, demonstrate the ancient sacrificial and hunting stratum preserved in the Suwa faith.

His face as a god of war became even stronger after the Middle Ages. Suwa Taisha explains that Suwa-no-Okami was revered as a god of bravery and victory, receiving devotion from figures such as Minamoto no Yoritomo, the Hojo clan, Ashikaga Takauji, Takeda Shingen, and Tokugawa Ieyasu—long-lasting fortunes of war prayed for by successive shoguns^[2]. Takeda Shingen in particular revered Suwa Myojin as the tutelary god of his warrior house, donating shrine buildings and territories, and is said to have been involved in the restoration of rituals. The fact that a god defeated in a test of strength in the *Kojiki* was later revered as a god of victory in battle and contests is not a contradiction. The very strength he showed in the scene of his defeat was reinterpreted in Suwa as a fierce divine protection.

The Onbashira Festival is the grandest ritual that displays his fierce power to this day. Suwa Taisha gives its formal name as the Shikinen Zoei Onbashira Taisai^[5], explaining that every seventh year—in the years of the Tiger and Monkey—sixteen massive fir trees are hauled and erected at the four corners of the precincts of the four shrines. The pillars are dragged from the mountains to the villages by human power, a sacred *nagikama* (sickle) is struck into them to acknowledge them as sacred trees, and the divine treasure halls and furnishings are newly built. This festival shows Takeminakata-no-Kami not merely as a god of classical literature, but as an ongoing god who cyclically shakes the body of the land.

Furthermore, the Kamisha of Suwa had a unique system known as the Ohori. Suwa City explains the Ohori as the yorishiro (vessel) of Suwa Myojin and the priest who stood at the apex of the Suwa shrines as a living god (arahitogami)^[6], noting that the position was hereditary from ancient times until the end of the early modern period. God dwells not only in the shrine buildings, but also in the human body. To understand Takeminakata-no-Kami, one must view the defeat in the Kuni-yuzuri, the ice of Lake Suwa, the massive trees of the Onbashira, hunting and sacrifice, the prayers of warrior families, and the Ohori as a living god, as one continuous sphere of faith.