Ehime has more than one taimeshi, and they are not variations on each other so much as separate dishes that ended up sharing a name. What is made at Hojo in Matsuyama is the cooked kind. A whole sea bream is laid on the rice and the pot is cooked with salt, soy sauce, and kombu; when it is done the fish is flaked and stirred through, and the stock that came out of the bones has gone into every grain.

Uwajima, in the south, does not cook the fish at all. Sliced raw bream is steeped in a sauce, mixed with aromatics, and poured over hot rice. Same name, entirely different dish.

The Hojo version comes with a story attached. The Empress Jingu is said to have put in at Kashima and prayed at the shrine there for victory and for safe passage, and this is what the local people set before her.

Whether that happened is not something anyone can check. What it does is give a fish and a pot of rice a name to travel under, and it has traveled for a very long time. The Uwajima version has its own origin account, traced to the sailors of the Iyo naval forces eating over rice on deck. Within one prefecture there are two settled answers to the same question, and neither side shows any interest in conceding.