For a contest with a winner
This is the category with the sharpest edge on it. Not general good fortune, not gradual improvement — a specific confrontation with a specific outcome, and you want to be on the right side of it. A match. A competition. A negotiation. An election.
It was originally the concern of warriors, and the shrines in it still carry that. Kashima Jingu enshrines Takemikazuchi, a kami of thunder and the sword, who in the founding myths is the one sent down to negotiate the transfer of the land at sword-point. The shrine has been a martial-arts site for centuries; kendo and judo practitioners still come.
The thing that makes Kashima specific
Kashima's association is not really with winning. It is with setting out — with the beginning of an undertaking. There is a word for it, Kashima-dachi, from the practice of praying here before departing on a campaign. That is a more precise thing to bring than "please let me win," and it is the reason people come here at the start of a venture rather than the night before a final.
Physically, the shrine matches. The precinct is a large stretch of forest, and reaching the inner shrine means walking a cedar path of about seven hundred metres, with the Kaname-ishi — the stone said to pin down the catfish that causes earthquakes — beyond it. The walk is part of the visit, not an approach to it.
How to ask
Ordinary sequence. If the contest matters, this is another category where the formal prayer service is the form that fits; athletes and teams book them routinely.
Two Kashima-specific rules, stricter than most: dogs may not enter the precinct at all, because they frighten the deer, and people within fifty days of a death in the family are asked to refrain, with a purification available at the gate if the visit is unavoidable.
