Iwafune-sama

Why do traces of a seafaring people remain here, so deep in the mountains? I had felt it faintly since last year, and I wanted to understand it better, so I went to a shrine standing in the mountains of Kochi Prefecture. It is called Iwafune Shrine, and also Amenooshihowake Shrine.

This is a place of worship that comes from a god called Nigihayahi. It is also closely tied to the Mononobe clan, which held Nigihayahi as its ancestral god and rose to become the foremost of the ancient clans, and the Monobe River flows to the north of the shrine.

In the Kansai region, where the Mononobe came to power, the worship of Nigihayahi still runs deep. I never imagined it would survive here too, in southern Shikoku, in the mountains beyond the coast of Kochi.

According to Tosa Densetsu (Legends of Tosa), by the folklorist Kazuo Katsurai, Nigihayahi once rode a stone boat across the sky and descended to Kawachi. After staying on in Yamato, he longed for his father, the god Amenooshihomimi, and descended to the land of Tosa.

Local tradition is truly fascinating. It is like a time capsule: in the form of myth, it has sealed away the memory of the road our ancestors traveled. The legends tell where the gods descended and how they moved before settling where they now rest.

A village that enshrines Yakami-hime in the old province of Inaba likewise holds a tradition that, in ancient times, the Yakami people crossed the sea and prospered there. Inishi, the old sound that names the path the ancestors traveled, may have its source in the language of those who crossed over.

The traces of the gods are not history as it stands. But I believe that myth is what our forebears made when they put some memory into information and passed it down in the form most likely to last. That is why, in the grounds of a shrine far from the sea, several stones shaped like boats sit in the mountains, as if to carry word of the ancestors’ passage. Stone, too, is an excellent medium for passing on information.

Behind the grounds sits an enormous iwakura, the rock where Nigihayahi is said to have descended. It seems that the tribe devoted to Nigihayahi came to this land seeking their ancestor, Amenooshihomimi.

In recent days, leaks of information and weaknesses in digital systems have come to light, and the effects have spread in every direction. When I think of it, for thirty years we have trusted information held in digital technology too much, and come to depend on it too heavily. Now we have learned that what was stored there can be wiped out in an instant by AI in the hands of people who mean harm. Seen this way, the means of passing on information that our forebears left in myth and tradition may be the most lasting of all.

Long ago, the Mononobe crossed the sea, followed the rivers into the mountains, and raised a world of their own there. As I left the shrine, two things began to echo hard in my mind: Nigihayahi, the primal god who is still wrapped in mystery, and the sound ama, or ame. It means heaven, and it is also an old word for the sea.