Period scandals into the story he ended up writing, the Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (東海道四谷怪談, Tokaido Yotsuya Ghost Story). It is probably Japan’s most famous ghost story, although the Tokaido has since been dropped from its name. Tsuruya’s kabuki play, first performed in 1825, was an instant hit and spawned a whole Oiwa-sub industry including, in modern times, films and TV dramas. Tsuruya’s story is complex and defies simple summarising.  Very briefly it begins with Oiwa’s father, Matazaemon, trying to force his daughter and her husband, Iemon, to separate, moves on to Iemon killing Matazaemon, Iemon tricked into being unfaithful to Oiwa, Oiwa killing herself by mistake as a result and laying a curse on Iemon. It ends with the latter becoming insane after being relentlessly haunted by Oiwa’s ghost and being killed out of vengeance and compassion by Yomoshichi, the husband of Oiwa’s prostitute sister.  ​

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It became the custom for actors who were performing in Yotsuya Kaidan productions to visit the shrine prior to their performance, and in time it came to be said that if the actors did not visit the shrine they would fall ill or meet with accidents or in extreme cases become victims of curses.  At the beginning of the Meiji period the shrine was formally named Oiwa Inari Tamiya Jinja. However, shortly after this, in 1879, it was burnt down in a fire which ravaged Yotsuya Sanmon-cho and was rebuilt on the Tamiya family site in Echizenbori, the current Shinkawa. This may have been at the request of Ichikawa Sadanji,  the most popular of the Yotsuya Kaidan actors, who made the case that the Yotsuya site was very inconvenient to travel to and that the shrine should be relocated to somewhere nearer  the Shintomi-za and other theatres. Shinkawa fitted the bill. The shrine was destroyed during the firebombing of 1945 and was reconstructed after the war.