The Ancient Stratum of "Tojin" Revealed by the Tojin-ishi Megaliths of the Ashizuri Peninsula｜The Kuroshio and Sarutahiko

Coconuts drift ashore, carried by the Kuroshio. This has become a well-known story since the folklorist Kunio Yanagita’s Kaijo no Michi (海上の道; literally “The Road on the Sea”), and on the Ashizuri Peninsula in Kochi Prefecture, where I was, plants such as Livistona chinensis (ビロウ, biro) and Ficus superba (アコウ, ako), which drifted ashore on the Kuroshio from the south, also grow wild.

Above all, Usubae (臼碆), on the west coast of the Ashizuri Peninsula, is the place where the Kuroshio first touches the Japanese mainland. And if you look from here westward to the east coast of the island of Kyushu, at Aoshima Shrine in Miyazaki Prefecture, too, a pure stand of biro palms makes up about one-sixth of the colony, some of them more than 350 years old.

The shrine reports two theories, one that the palms are a relic of ancient times and one that they drifted in on the Kuroshio, but the Kuroshio seems to me an “invisible god” that has kept carrying rich life to the ancient Japanese archipelago.

Here there is one strange thing. There is no doubt that since the most ancient times the Kuroshio has kept carrying rich life to the Japanese archipelago. If so, it is somewhat odd that we find no trace of ancient people who worshipped the Kuroshio, or of any being equivalent to a god of it.

There are many deities associated with the Kuroshio, and the princess deities of the ancient seafaring peoples offered their prayers as if following the belt of the Kuroshio. The question is the god to whom they prayed. Its form could not be seen in last year’s survey of Kyushu, but in this survey of the southwestern part of Shikoku, I feel it has begun to show itself a little. The one holding a strong key is “Tojin” (唐人).

In the past, people who came from overseas were called “Tojin,” but this was not limited to the people of the Tang, which flourished in ancient China; it was because the sounds “to” and “kara” had origins that, in older times, denoted immigrant peoples.

This understanding itself is common, but what I realized on this journey is that we must go back to a stratum older than that. In fact, on the Ashizuri Peninsula it is handed down that the sound “Tojin” meant a shining place, that is, a place where the gods dwell.

In fact, on the summit area of the Ashizuri Peninsula, countless huge iwakura (磐座, sacred rock seats of the gods) called the Tojin-ishi megaliths (唐人石巨石群) are scattered about. They probably collapsed under the impact of historical Nankai Trough earthquakes, but if they had kept their ancient form, they would put England’s Stonehenge in the shade. That is how strange and overwhelming the giant stones lined up on the summit are.

If you climb up to the site, you can look out over the whole area, and this suggests an ancient stratum in which the place was named Tojin because, when the seafaring peoples saw it from the sea, sunlight shone in here and made it glow. This perspective is important.

In the places where the Kuroshio carries things ashore, giant stones and huge burial mounds were built and worshipped as if designed on the premise that they would be seen from the sea. The Kamezuka Kofun, a huge keyhole-shaped mound in Oita City, was built on high ground facing the sea, and its surface is covered with white quartz fukiishi (葺石, paving stones), which shine dazzlingly when they reflect the sunlight.

Above all, the Kamezuka Kofun is the tomb of a chief of the Ama-be (海部), who brought together the ancient seafaring peoples, and we can assume that moving across the sea was itself a source of power and that they had quite a large cultural sphere. The huge keyhole-shaped mounds of Sakai and Kawachi, which would later become the scene of the age of great kofun, no longer show any trace of it today, but they too were, without exception, once designed with the peoples who would see them from the sea or the water in mind.

If that ancient stratum is the origin of “Tojin,” then the Japanese word “Tojin” seems to have gradually shifted its meaning while holding a double state. In other words, in the primordial memory, “Tojin” was not a word for immigrants but a word for a shining place as seen by people who traveled back and forth across the sea, a place where the gods dwell. It may have gradually fused with the people who came across the sea, who would later be called Tojin. The reason for this is the amatsukami (天つ神) who came across the sea.

In other words, the word moved little by little, taking on substance along the way, from a shining place seen by the seafaring peoples (a place where the gods dwell) to the amatsukami who came across the sea, until eventually people came to call immigrants Tojin.

As a result of fusing over many long years, the ancient stratum may have been overwritten yet survived faintly at the level of place names and the like. Seen this way, the origins of words like Tojin, or words containing “唐” (to, kara), found all over the country may perhaps share a consistent commonality, in that they may have been scattered not along people but along the flow of the currents. For, as with biro palms and ako trees, plants are not the only things carried ashore on the current.

Then there is the place name Ashizuri, wrapped in mystery. According to one theory, there is a story that in old language Ashizuri referred to “Sada.” This is Sada no Okami (佐太大神), enshrined in Izumo Province, that is, Sarutahiko (猿田毘古神). He is the god who guided the way at the Tenson Korin (天孫降臨, the descent of the Heavenly Grandson), who joined the amatsukami and the kunitsukami (国つ神), who showed the way as a god of guidance and led those who drifted ashore to the places where they were meant to arrive. He is, so to speak, a god who stands at the knot itself.

Then the reason this land was called “Ashizuri” also comes a little into view. Just as plants drifted ashore from the south and grew wild without the help of human hands, Sarutahiko, a god who has still not shown his form, may have been symbolized not only in the movements of gods who rode the Kuroshio or the Tsushima Current, but also in things like the spread of plants.

Seen this way, I cannot help feeling that the great god Sarutahiko was the deification of the fact that things like biro palms drifted ashore naturally, and that his origin was, surprisingly, the “current” (潮) itself. The current carries plants, carries people, and carries gods. The flow of the current, which in southern Shikoku would be the Kuroshio. Naturally, worship of the moon, which influences the currents, must have intersected with it there.

From western to southwestern Shikoku, many mysteries remain untouched. If we think of the Japanese gods as being like human beings with bodies, we will be completely mistaken. This time, I stood on many capes and cliffs and watched the Kuroshio from them for hours.

A current that winds like a dragon and stretches into the distance. We tend to assume that we do not know the gods, but perhaps this is the primordial god. Then the god was always there. Isn’t that the true identity of the Japanese gods?