A Brief History of Japan - Jonathan Clements

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      And so Izanagi is a bachelor once more, still shedding gods like dandruff, particularly when he bathes to wash away the taint of the underworld. He washes his eyes in a stream, for example, creating the sun goddess Amaterasu (Heaven Shines) and the moon god Tsu-kiyomi (Moon Counting). And he blows his nose, creating a whole host of new troubles by making the storm god, Susano’o (Rushing Raging Man).

      A possible confusion over the nature of such gods survives today as a pun in Japanese, where kami means both “god” (written with a word imported from China) and “above.” But in the Ainu language—which is spoken today only among the people of Hokkaidō, but was once possibly spoken substantially further to the south—the very similar word kamuy also means “above,” and is used to describe tribal totems. It seems that the confused tale of Japan’s time of gods may indeed represent a hodgepodge of origin myths from assimilated local tribes, whose odd geographic features, totems, and guardian deities have been coopted into a sprawling, ever-growing narrative. Some of the names may even refer to places in what is now Korea, thereby making them impossible to find on a map of Japan.

      In any case, the tale goes on: the sun and moon fall out when the latter murders a minor goddess of food, separating day and night thereafter. Izanagi himself fades from the story after he is last seen arguing with Susano’o, the Rushing Raging Man, over his responsibilities. Susano’o, like Izanagi’s other children, has been given a realm to rule over, but instead sits weeping because he wishes to meet his mother. Banished by Izanagi, Susano’o stops off to see his sister on his way out, leading to a contest with the sun goddess over who can create the most divinities. Although this appears at first to be good-natured and cordial, before long Susano’o is acting like the very worst of divine siblings—letting horses run wild on his sister’s rice paddies, shitting under the throne in her palace just before the sacred time of harvesting first fruits, and in a final indignity, ripping a hole in the roof of her weaving hall and throwing in the flayed corpse of a pony.

      As one well might, the sun goddess Amaterasu flees into seclusion, shutting herself away in a cave and plunging the world into darkness. The various thousands of deities assemble in panic and try to lure her out of the cave, hanging a sacred mirror on a nearby tree along with a comma-shaped jewel, and performing several rituals that mean nothing to today’s readers but may evoke some half-remembered ceremony of olden times. Considering that this mirror and jewel (or their more modern facsimiles) are two of Japan’s three sacred treasures, it is likely that the tale of the disappearing sun goddess reflects a disaster in ancient Japan—an eruption, an eclipse, or perhaps even 536 CE, the year without a summer—which obliged the various contending tribes of indigenous and newcomer peoples to collaborate. Notably, the several contradictory accounts contained in the Nihongi do not merely name the gods and their various methods, but annotate them with the family names of their descendants at the Japanese court in the 700s, when the tale was written down.

      Eventually, Amaterasu is lured out by the raucous shouts that greet a lascivious dance performed by the Terrible Female of Heaven. Wondering what could possibly be so interesting in the world, since she is no longer in it, Amaterasu pokes her head out of the cave and is swiftly dragged into the open. The gods tie a sacred cord to her that will prevent her from going back into the cave, and the sun is no longer able to disappear.

      Susano’o is censured and banished for his acts—hardly much of a punishment, as he was already leaving when he stopped in to see Amaterasu in the first place. Not to be outdone, he kills a fertility goddess as he sets off, scattering the ground with grains, which suggests at least part of the story had its origin in the cycle of the seasons. He then descends to earth, where he runs into an old couple who offer him the last surviving one of their eight daughters if he will slay the eight-headed, eight-tailed dragon that has killed all the others. Susano’o sets a trap by leaving out strong rice wine that has been brewed eight times, which gets the dragon so drunk that the god is able to defeat it. While ripping open its corpse, he finds a sword embedded in its tail—the Sword of the Gathering of Clouds of Heaven—which he presents to his sister Amaterasu by some way of apology.

      And so the stories go on, in the Kojiki and the Nihongi, with multiple generations of begettings and begats as the descendants of these early gods feud and forage, make love and make babies. It does not take much healthy cynicism to see in the stories a recurring and universal motif of tribes jostling for resources and supremacy, and legitimizing their victories in retrospect by claiming to enjoy the favor of the gods.

      Amaterasu’s grandson Ninigi, whose full name translates as “Truly Winning Have I Won with Rushing Might Ruling Grand Rice Ears of Heaven,” is sent down to rule the entire land, bearing sacred treasures to prove he is divine—the Sword of the Gathering of Heaven, the mirror that once captured the light of Amaterasu herself, and a comma-shaped jewel—the significance of which remains unclear. There are some more couplings and plighting of troths, and three generations later, it is Ninigi’s descendant, Jinmu, who is recorded in the annals as the first emperor of Japan.

      Jinmu, it was said, was born on the southwestern isle of Kyūshū, and began a long march eastward along the coast of the Inland Sea in search of a place that would be more suitable for ruling the whole archipelago. With the aid of a three-legged crow sent down by Amaterasu to guide him, he finds a wondrous paradise—a verdant plain backed by marvelous hills, rich in fruits and games, and with ample room for expansion. This is Yamato, the “Gateway to the Mountains” and the heartland of the emperors.

      The stories of Jinmu, as recorded in the Nihongi, are themselves echoes of Stone Age folktales, complete with tribal chants celebrating the crushing of enemy skulls with rocks and the subhuman status of the hero’s “Shrimp Barbarian” foes. Jinmu himself springs into song to inspire his men, but it is not clear if he is composing new war chants or is simply the first to be recorded performing verses that date even further back into ancient times.

      In a sense, only the religious elements of prehistoric Japan endure in some form today. Many grave mounds still exist, often in incongruous locations—little green hillocks of woodland shoved in the middle of a shopping district or housing estate. Certain beliefs also appear to have survived in some form down through the centuries, in the form of Japan’s indigenous religion of Shintō, “the Way of the Gods.”

      We should be careful not to see prehistorical parallels when they are not necessarily there—many elements of modern Shintō, including the very idea that it is an organized “religion,” are relatively recent innovations. Still alive in modern Shintō is the sense that human beings are closely connected to the sacred: daily life is steeped in portents and intimations of the divine; shrines persist in the middle of bustling shopping districts; one rarely has to wander far from the roadside before bumping into a rock tied with sacred rope or some similar such indicator of reverence for nature spirits. Shintō is often confused, even by the Japanese themselves, with folk traditions specific to particular locales, associated with local landmarks or the marking of the seasons of the agricultural year. Other superstitions and events lift—inadvertently or otherwise—elements of Buddhist belief.

      Shintō—at least the uses to which it was put by the editors of the Kojiki and Nihongi—is more than a mythology. Its beliefs remained a central underpinning of the Japanese nation until 1945, and are still implicit in many rituals performed by Japan’s ceremonial head of state, the emperor. New emperors still offer a sheaf of rice to Amaterasu, and incumbent emperors annually offer harvest donations to the gods in general.

      Many of Shintō’s nature gods were reinterpreted with the advent of Buddhism in the medieval period, reimagined as Japanese incarnations of Buddhist saints. There has certainly been a degree of ad-mixture at a folk level, and many Shintō shrines offer protective amulets or wooden prayer boards (ema) in return for “donations” by visitors who were once called pilgrims but who are increasingly regarded and treated as mere tourists. Visit a Shintō shrine today and you will see visitors washing their hands at an entrance spring, clapping their hands together to startle away evil spirits, and offering prayers for a variety of ancient and modern concerns: lost objects, safe childbirth, cures for disease and infertility, success in education or a career. They might even offer a donation for the chance to draw a prophetic message or

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