#Matsuno'o Shrine

[tenjin-no-shinja]

Chapter 3: The History of a Shrine (Hie)

Hie in Ancient and Medieval Japan

Origins

His [Kageyama Haruki] emphasis on agricultural fertility rites is based on an equally modern thesis about the genesis of Japanese culture as the product of local communities of rice growers. Of course, rice culture was indeed a major factor in the political and economic life of ancient Japan, but a closer look at ancient kami cults, including that of Hie, reveals a range of other themes. In fact, the single kami that appears in the earliest source on Hie (Kojiki, 712) was not so much a generous god of rice as a threatening and violent force. Moreover, this kami's cult appears to have been based less on a changeless native culture than on a dynamic interaction between the expansionist politics of the Yamato kings on the one hand, and ritual specialists with continental skills and backgrounds on the other...Ōyamakui figures here among the many children of Ōtoshi-no-Kami ("the kami of great harvests"), on of Susanowo's numerous sons. This places the kami of Hie in the lineage of earthly deities from Izumo that ultimately culminated in Ōkuninushi, that earthly deity who "built the land" before handing it over to Ninigi, the heavenly ancestor of the imperial dynasty. Ōyamakui means "the great mountain peg," ad Yamasue-no-Ōnushi "the great lord of the mountain's end." ①

ーPages 69-70

① From the endnotes: "Here, I follow Nishimiya Kazutami 1979. The peg or pole (kui) could be a pillar on the mountain into which the deity was invitied to descend, or a phallic symbol.

Matsunoo... was the ancestral shrine of the Hata, a lineage of immigrants of Korean origin... weaving experts and managers of estates but also as skilled ritualists. The deity of this shrine features also in the founding legend of the neighboring Kamo Shrines.... a daughter of the Kamo chieftain found a red arrow inthe Kamo river... took home and kept in her bedding. Soon, she gave birth to a son... he was asked to serve sake to his real father at a drinking feast. Without hesitating the boy offered the sake to heaven, transformed himself into a kami, and disappeared, piercing the roof on his ascent. Like the red arrow that had fathered him, he turned out to be a deity of thunder.

This is but one instance of a motif that appears in many variants: deities who appear as snakes, arrows, and thunderbolts and who father semidivine children by impregnating young virgins...There is much to suggest that the Yamato court attached great importance to this type of cult... the hill of Miwa... was a major site of court kami worship. The deity enshrined there was Ōnamuchi or Ōmonushi—identified with Ōkuninushi...This deity shared many of Ōyamakui's characteristics... emerges as the protoypical earthly deity: a violent force that Yamato's heavenly dynasty struggled to control... the kami of Miwa transformed into a red arrow and impregnated a beautiful maiden while she was defecating in a ditch. The child... was chosen to become the wife of Jinmu.... Nine royal generations later, when Yamato was plagued by a mortal epidemic, the kami of Miwa appeared to Emperor Sujin in a dream... declared that the disease was his doing and demanded that his spirit be served by a certain Ōtataneko. Soon, it became clear that... was a child of the Miwa deity himself, who had entered the sleeping quarters of Ōtataneko's mother in the guise of a snake by way of the keyhole (Philippi 1969: 201-4)... later Emperor Yūryaku dispatched one of his vassals of Korean stock to seize the Miwa deity. It turned out to be a large snake that cracked thunder at the emperor, forcing him to flee (Aston 1972: I, 347).

Ōtataneko was the ancestor of the priestly lineages of both Miwa and Kamo. The priests of Hie... claimed the same ancestry as the priests of Kamo. This suggests that they were part of an extensive network of intermarrying priestly lineages who controlled a category of earthly deities that threatened the heavenly rule of the Yamato kings with the help of techniques that were, at least in part, of continental origin.

—Pages 70-71

Photos are mine do not use without permission

Hie, then, was not an archetypical indigenous cult that flourish in an apolitical, harmonious setting of rice-growing natives. Rather, it emerged in the context of the establishment of the Yamato kingdom, as one of a range of sites where the dangerous deities of the earth were subdued with the help of immigrants who possessed special knowledge of continental rites.

—Page 72

[raining-in-kyoto]

lanterns at the Matsuno'o Taisha, Arashiyama, Kyoto

[shintoinenglish]

Hello, been following your blog for a while. I am still very new in trying to understand some Shinto stuff. I am also part of the Shinto discord but I get shy asking stuff for fear of sounding stupid. Trying to find much if anything on Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto is really difficult. I can't seem to figure out if Shrine Shinto or a different type of Shinto? Sorry if it's a dumb question. Very thankful for your blog!

Unfortunately, he doesn't have a lot of shrines. He's just not as well-known, I think. Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive list, though, so I'll translate it:

Tohoku region:

Gassan Jinja, Shonai, Higashitagawa, Yamagata

Kanto region:

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Chonan, Chosei, Chiba

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Shinodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Hinosawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Itako, Ibaraki

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Omiya, Hitachi, Ibaraki

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Kawasaki, Asao, Kanagawa

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Sagamihara, Kanagawa

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Johoku, Tsuchiura, Ibaraki

Chubu region:

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Kiyosu, Aichi

Kinki region:

Tsukuyomi Jinja (sub-shrine of Matsuno'o Taisha), Kyoto, Kyoto

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Kyotanabe, Kyoto

Tsukiyomi no Miya, Kotai Jingu, Ise, Mie

Tsukiyomi no Miya, Toyouke Daijingu, Toyokawa, Ise, Mie

Kyushu region:

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Tanushimaru, Kurume, Fukuoka

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Sakurajima Yokoyama, Kagoshima, Kagoshima

Tsukuyomi Jinja, Iki island, Iki, Nagasaki