古代日本の巫女文化と男王の覇権（見出し行なし。英語の H1 から付けた題）Miko Culture and Kingly Hegemony in Ancient Japan

In this piece I introduce an important tale in the Nihon Shoki about a crucial emperor, the episode that led to Amaterasu being moved to the site of today’s Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu, and I point to a great cultural rift, a hollow, between the Yayoi and Kofun periods that is tied to it. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are unfamiliar to most readers, so until now in Shitsurae I have given only partial hints. In this series I will take it step by step over several installments, so that your understanding deepens along the way.

To begin: the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu, known for enshrining Amaterasu, is called Kotai Jingu. Though Kotai Jingu is now known as the shrine of the highest divine rank in Japan, Amaterasu was not originally enshrined at this place. Shaped by complex later developments such as the State Shinto policies of the Meiji era, only the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu has come to be called simply “Jingu” and placed at the summit of the Shrine Shinto system. That supremacy has now begun to collapse, however, and quietly, across the land, the rise of different divine lineages has begun. This movement cannot be seen with the eye, but when I survey the whole of Japanese history as a spiritual movement, it appears as a current of the future. My main research theme is to discern the future of Japan from this unseen movement. The spirituality of modern Japan and its people has weakened to an extreme, yet it still lies deep at the root. I am sure a large-scale spiritual movement will arise from Japan before long.

First, where Amaterasu was originally worshipped is unknown. The Nihon Shoki records part of her important movements, however. The Kojiki tells a similar tale but does not describe Amaterasu’s own movements. The Nihon Shoki says a grave crisis occurred in the reign of Emperor Sujin, the tenth emperor. According to it, around Mount Miwa in southern Yamato, which Sujin ruled, famine, epidemic and war combined to kill half the people, and governance fell into a state of collapse. The Kojiki too says a severe epidemic struck in Sujin’s reign, but the two texts differ in what Sujin did to end the crisis.

Looking first at the Kojiki: troubled by the crisis, Sujin fell asleep, and Omononushi appeared in his dream with an oracle. It told him to find Otataneko and to worship Omononushi properly, and the epidemic would subside. Otataneko was said to be in Mino village in Kawachi. Sujin sent envoys to find him and bring him, and when Omononushi was worshipped as the oracle said, the crisis ended. This is tied to the origin of Omiwa Shrine in what is now southern Nara Prefecture. Note, though, that here the Kojiki does not describe a relationship between Sujin and Amaterasu. There is just one point: in the passage on Sujin’s genealogy, under his daughter Toyosukiirihime, it is written that she “tended the shrine of the god of Ise.” The details are unclear, but it suggests that something involving “the god of Ise = Amaterasu” happened.

This is where the Nihon Shoki account becomes important. In the Kojiki the oracle comes through Omononushi appearing in Sujin’s own dream, but in the Nihon Shoki Omononushi appears in the dreams of three of Sujin’s retainers. What marks the Nihon Shoki, though, is that it briefly points to a major event before this dream message. It says Sujin first prayed to the gods without sleeping, asking for the epidemic to end. As a result, it came to light that one cause was that Amaterasu and Yamato Okunitama were being worshipped side by side in Sujin’s palace. Yamato Okunitama does not appear in the Kojiki, but later tales show a connection with Omononushi. As an aside, since the Nihon Shoki is written in imitation of Chinese histories, this passage reads in the original: 『六年、百姓流離、或有背叛、其勢難以德治之。是以、晨興夕惕、請罪神祇。先是、天照大神・倭大国魂二神、並祭於天皇大殿之內。然畏其神勢、共住不安。』

The nuance may be hard to convey, but the cause was highly spiritual: under Sujin, gods belonging to two different lineages, the amatsukami (天つ神), the gods of heaven, and the kunitsukami (国つ神), the gods of the land, which I speak of in Shitsurae, had been enshrined together in the palace, and this brought on calamity. Sujin moved at once to break the situation.

At this time Sujin issued an edict to two of his daughters. Through it, Amaterasu was entrusted to Toyosukiirihime and Yamato Okunitama to Nunakinoirihime, and a spiritual journey began, in which they were to seek the best lands in which to enshrine the two gods. Nunakinoirihime, however, lost her strength midway and could not enshrine Yamato Okunitama in a fitting place. Toyosukiirihime enshrined Amaterasu at Kasanui village in Yamato and built there a sacred precinct thought to be the origin of the shrine. The first place to which Amaterasu was moved is said to be Hibara Shrine, about a twenty-minute walk along the foot of the mountains from Omiwa Shrine, in present-day southern Nara Prefecture.

The Nihon Shoki tells nothing more. The result was this: Amaterasu, an amatsukami who had been worshipped in Sujin’s palace, was successfully enshrined by Toyosukiirihime on the site of today’s Hibara Shrine, while Yamato Okunitama, a kunitsukami, could not be enshrined, because the power of that god wore Nunakinoirihime down. The Nihon Shoki then moves on to the account of the dream message to end the epidemic, which the Kojiki also records. Here, though, it uses the word “disasters” (災害), which suggests that the causes of crisis were several, not only epidemic. The dream-message accounts also differ between the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.

The Nihon Shoki goes on to say that, to find the reason for the repeated calamities, Sujin used divination to ask the gods, and at this point Yamatototohimomosohime was possessed by a god. This princess is Yamatototohimomosohime in the Nihon Shoki and Yamatotomomosohime in the Kojiki. Both texts place her as a daughter of Emperor Korei, the eighth emperor. As I noted earlier, however, apart from the first emperor, Jimmu (Kamuyamatoiwarebiko), the eight emperors from the second, Suizei, to the ninth, Kaika, are called ketsushi hachidai (欠史八代), the eight reigns missing from history, because their actual existence has not been confirmed in Japan. Emperor Korei is among them, which deserves attention. In this blank of ancient Japanese history, a change from the Yayoi to the Kofun period, and the rift that came with it, took shape.

According to the Nihon Shoki, it was Omononushi who spoke through Yamatototohimomosohime. Omononushi gave Sujin an oracle: if he would rule the land, he must honor Omononushi and worship him rightly, and all would be calm. The point is that this oracle came through the spirit possession of an ancient woman shaman, a miko (巫女). Here appears the rift between the Yayoi culture of the miko and the Kofun culture of the male king. Yamatototohimomosohime was a leader in the position of a queen who led a Yayoi tribal group, and Sujin a leader in the position of a Kofun male king. Their lineages of ritual and culture were fundamentally different, each rooted in a separate world.

To put it more simply, Yamatototohimomosohime, as a miko, was very likely a queen who led a particular tribal group. For this reason it has long been thought in Japan that she was Himiko, the queen of Yamatai described in the Book of Wei section of the Records of the Three Kingdoms known as the Gishi Wajinden, and after various inquiries I agree. Later, after male kings won hegemony centered on Yamato, the old queens (miko) of the Yayoi were incorporated into the male kings’ lineage. This is the key to reading the mythic structure of Japan from the imperial history onward.

Because the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are unfamiliar to most readers, I will stop here for now. This basic flow develops further, but which of the two texts tells the historical truth is not the question. They were compiled with different natures and purposes, so the way of reading each differs.