As we saw in chapter 4, according to the Kojiki version of the land-ceding myth, Ōkuninushi agrees to cede the land to the heavenly descendants on condition that they build for him a shrine in palace style:
Only, if you will worship me, making my dwelling-place like the plentiful heavenly dwelling where rules the heavenly sun-linage of the offspring of the heavenly deities, firmly rooting the posts of the palace in the bedrock below, and raising high the crossbeams unto Takama-nö-hara itself, then I will conceal myself and wait [upon you] in the less-than-one-hundred eighty road-bendings. (Kojiki, NKBT 1: 123, trans. Philippi: 134)
These words, spoken in the god age, were meant to lead to the foundation of the Izumo Taisha, the Izumo Grand Shrine, but it is not before the reign of the eleventh emperor, Suinin, that, according to Kojiki, a shrine of the requested kind will be built for Ōkuninushi. In the meantime, Ōkuninushi is supposed to hide and wait somewhere.1
Ōkuninushi’s Place of Hiding and Waiting
Both chronicles speak of momo tarazu yaso kumade, in which momo tarazu (‘less than one hundred’), is a poetic pillow word used with yaso (‘eighty’), a number that often expresses a vague plurality in the ancient texts. The semantically essential part of the phrase is therefore the word kumade, which is often testified together with words meaning ‘way’ or ‘river’. Although the text does not mention a ‘way’ or ‘river’ in this particular case, the word is usually rendered as if it meant places along a way. Chamberlain, for example, has translated the phrase as “I will hide in the eighty (less than one hundred) road windings” (1919: 123).
This translation does not make good sense, not even if the road to the land of Yomi were being referred to, as some commentators have assumed.2 Why should the former ruler of the land hide in the turnings of a road to the Netherworld, waiting there until he finally gets the shrine he has demanded? After all, Ōkuninushi has only promised to resign as the ruler of the land if the heavenly descendants build his shrine and worship him. We must therefore first think about a better interpretation of the word kumade and consider that no way or river is mentioned in the text. Kumade alone could have meant nooks and recesses (kuma) formed by landscape features generally. Man’yōshū has a poem in which the expression momotarazu yaso kuma characterised a slope (saka).3 It is therefore better to assume that Ōkuninushi’s shrine is meant to be built at a place with rocks providing ‘nooks’ (kuma), such as were typical features of open-air nature sanctuaries.
A fitting mountain of that kind could have been Mt. Miwa in Yamato, where Ōkuninushi, at the end of his land-making, had to worship the god of Mt. Miwa and from where he might have come to meet the heavenly challengers at the beach of Inasa in Izumo. The Ōmiwa Shrine is famous for having no wooden main hall because the deities worshipped there are thought to dwell in the sacred forest where several rocks are dedicated to them. However, it is not Miwa in Yamato but a place in Izumo where Ōkuninushi finally gets the shrine he has requested. He therefore rather withdraws to wait in a similar grove of Izumo, where the people already worship him as the Great God of Izumo.4
Historically, the transition from open-air sanctuaries to shrines in a dwelling style was probably mediated by cult places with only a treasure house that was placed beside the cult mark.5 The novelty Ōkuninushi requests in the land-ceding episode, however, is a shrine in the form of a noble house (miya) that would be comparable to early imperial dwellings (‘palaces’). It is therefore likely that he wants to be worshipped by the future emperors in a shrine that befits a new, higher status. The foundation of his miya-type shrine in Izumo could therefore be paradigmatic of the transition from early open-air sanctuaries to cult places with a ‘main hall’ (seiden or honden) in which to keep a sacred treasure as a shintai (‘god-body’) representing the deity’s presence during worship.
Prince Homuchiwake Worships the Great God of Izumo
When the age of the gods has come to an end and the first emperors have been established close to Mt. Miwa in Yamato, it happens that Prince Homuchiwake, the son of Emperor Suinin, has already grown a beard and is still not able to speak. Yet, hearing one day the cry of a high-flying swan, he tries to say something. The emperor takes this for a good sign and orders that the bird should be caught, whereupon it is brought to him after having been searched for and found in Koshi, a place at the western coast. So far, this story is found in both Kojiki and Nihon shoki.6 But whereas Nihon shoki says the bird was caught in Izumo and the prince learned to speak while playing with it, Kojiki continues with the following story that ends with the order to build a shrine for Ōkuninushi in Izumo.7
Seeing the swan for a second time, the prince tries to say something again, but cannot. The emperor is much grieved and eventually has a dream in which he is told: ‘If you repair my shrine (miya) like the emperor’s palace (miaraka), the prince will surely speak.’ Now the emperor makes a great divination by burning a deer’s shoulder blade to find out the identity of the deity. The answer is that the curse is the will of the Great God of Izumo. Ready to send the prince off for praying at the shrine of that god, the emperor first divines again to find out who would be a good choice to send along as an attendant. Prince Aketatsu is chosen, and the emperor orders him to make divining oaths. Finally, this prince and Prince Unakami no miko are dispatched with Prince Homuchiwake, but once again they first divine, this time to find out by which ‘door’ it would be auspicious to start the journey. It is only when all these various acts of divining have produced good signs that the emperor is fully convinced and the prince and his attendants can travel to Izumo:
So, they arrived in Izumo, and when [the prince] had finished worshipping the Great God and [they] went back up [to the capital] they made a pontoon bridge (subashi) in the middle of the river Hi, built a temporary palace, and let [the prince] stay. Then, the ancestor of the Izumo no kuni no miyatsuko, named Kiisatsumi, decorated a mountain of green leaves, set it up down the river and offered a great meal. At this time the prince spoke: “That mountain-like thing of green leaves down the river looks like a mountain but is not a mountain. Is it perhaps the cult place of the priest who worships Ashihara no Shikoo no Ōkami dwelling in the So no Miya of Iwakuma in Izumo?” (*NKBT 1: 199)
The two attending princes are most delighted to hear Prince Homuchiwake speak for the first time. When they are back at the capital, they report to the emperor that the prince can now speak because he has prayed to the Great God of Izumo. The emperor rejoices and sends Prince Unakami back to have him build the shrine.8
This story is usually interpreted as referring to a later repairing or rebuilding of a shrine that had already been built in the god age for Ōkuninushi, as Nihon shoki suggests. Yet we must respect that Kojiki advocates a different doctrine and has no other story saying that Ōkuninushi’s condition for ceding the rule of the land was met by the heavenly descendants. At the beginning, the text has Chinese characters meaning miya and ‘repair’, but the story ends with the emperor finally ordering the miya to be built.9
Since Kojiki covers the time up to the death of Empress Suiko (628 CE), it is understandable that it does not deal with the foundation of the Ise Shrine, which historically may have happened later. To also omit a story about the building of the shrine in Izumo, however, would have jeopardised the success of the stratagem implied in the land-ceding myth, namely, the promotion of the doctrine that the emperors of ritsuryō times had a legitimate right to rule all the land opened up for rice cultivation. To make the land-ceding myth effective as a charter myth, Kojiki did have to mention the building of Ōkuninushi’s shrine, regardless of whether it had already been built or not.
The passage quoted earlier identifies Kiisatsumi as the ancestor of the kuni no miyatsuko (governors) of Izumo and as the priest who worships the ‘great god’ Ashihara no Shikoo (alias Ōkuninushi). This clearly refers to a cult such as was later typical of Ōkuninushi’s shrine in Kizuki where the hereditary kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo held the position of the chief priest. By introducing Kiisatsumi as performing the meal-offering rite, the text therefore anticipates that he will become the priest of the new shrine and the governor of Izumo as a province of the emperor’s realm.
Although this is what I see expressed in Kojiki, I do not think that the shrine in Kizuki (which became famous as Izumo Taisha) is the place being referred to. A closer look at the text suggests that Kojiki rather refers to a predecessor of the famous Izumo Shrine that has left no clear traces except this account in Kojiki. If it existed for some time, then it was probably abolished when the shrine in Kizuki was founded.
The crucial point in the story of Homuchiwake’s visit to Izumo is that the prince suddenly starts speaking and asks whether the mountain-formed object made of green leaves might perhaps be the ceremonial place of the priest who worships Ashihara no Shikoo no Ōkami in the So no Miya at Iwakuma in Izumo. Why does the prince ask this strange and long question after having worshipped the Great God of Izumo?
Ashihara no Shikoo and the Worship at Iwakuma
Since the speechless prince from Yamato is hardly familiar with the topography and cult situation of Izumo, and cannot be supposed to make such a long sentence when he spells his first articulate words, we must assume that the words are not his own but those of the Great God of Izumo. Similarly, a story in Nihon shoki says that in the reign of the former emperor, Sujin, a child from Tanba reveals the long names of the treasures which Takehinateru has brought from heaven and stored in the shrine of the Great God of Izumo. However, the man who reports this then adds: “These do not seem like the words of a young infant. May they have been spoken by divine inspiration?” (trans. Aston I: 163).
In the present story, the god apparently speaks through the prince to let the emperor know where and by whom he wishes to be worshipped. The place will be called Iwakuma, the shrine So no Miya, and the priest is Kiisatsumi, who is just going to offer a meal to Prince Homuchiwake at the lower course of the Hinokawa. The object made of green leaves is apparently the temporary seat for the deity invoked during that ceremony, and its form and colour may suggest that the god comes from his dwelling area in a wooded mountain. Kiisatsumi will therefore offer the meal to the prince on behalf of Ashihara no Shikoo no Ōkami, thereby re-enacting the banquet which that god as Ōkuninushi (his usual name in Kojiki) had offered when he agreed to cede his land to the heavenly descendants. In the present case, the ceremony is only a reminder, meaning that the emperor must now finally meet the condition of the earlier deal and build that shrine. If he does so, the curse would be lifted, the prince would start speaking his own articulate words and all the land would henceforth be rightly ruled by the heavenly descendants.
A point that deserves special attention is that Ōkuninushi is here mentioned under his alternative name Ashihara no Shikoo, which is said to mean ‘ugly man of the reed plains’. Tsuda Sōkichi has suggested that this name might be an allusion to Ōnamuchi’s rule of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, the Central Land of the Reed Plains (Tsuda 1963b: 479). If so, then the name may perhaps have been chosen to refer to Ōkuninushi in the state of opening up a read wilderness (ashihara) and turning it into kuni (‘territory’). In Harima fudoki, this special name Ashihara no Shikoo is used in several land-claiming stories, as we saw in chapter 3. In Kojiki, it appears three times. First, Susanoo uses it when Ōnamuchi visits him in Ne no kuni to ask for help in the fight with his half-brothers, from which he will emerge as the winner.10 The second time the name is used in Kojiki is when Kamimusubi tells Ashihara no Shikoo that he should make the great land together with Sukunabikona. Since both uses of the name mark the beginning of a land-making enterprise, we may expect that the single third use in Kojiki, in the present story, might imply a similar meaning. Ōkuninushi can therefore use this special name to highlight his achievement as the great land-maker before he gets the requested shrine in compensation for ceding the rule of the land to the Yamato Court.
Assuming therefore that the name Ashihara no Shikoo was associated with Ōkuninushi’s active side as a land-maker, its use here corresponds to what in a perhaps later terminology would have been called his ‘wild spirit’ or aramitama.11 As noted earlier, Kan’yogoto says that Ōnamuchi’s nigimitama was in Mt. Miwa of Yamato. There, it eventually came to be conflated with Ōmononushi, the deified chief of the nature spirits. Nihon shoki can therefore say that Ōmononushi was another name for Ōkuninushi, whereas Kojiki clearly distinguishes between the two gods in the final episode of the great land-making myth.12 Later, however, Kojiki represents the god of Mt. Miwa as a deity called Ōmononushi, whose snake form (representing Ōmononushi) can occasionally change into that of a young man and a lover of women, which is typical of Ōkuninushi.13
This somewhat confusing cult situation is a consequence of the founder’s cult, which in this case was associated with two different land-making myths.14 First, Ōkuninushi/ Ōnamuchi ‘makes’ the land by taking it from the nature spirits and therefore must worship Ōmononushi on Mt. Miwa; then the heavenly descendants force him to cede the land to them, for which they must build him a shrine in the palace style and worship him in Izumo.
The question remains: where in Izumo was the shrine for Ashihara no Shikoo supposed to have been built according to Kojiki? Our interpretation so far suggests that this was at a place called Iwakuma, but no place of that name in Izumo is mentioned elsewhere in the ancient texts. It is the name of Kiisatsumi, and the location of the meal-offering ceremony at the lower course of the Hinokawa, that can solve the riddle to some extent. The name Kiisa suggests a relation with Kiisakami Takahiko who, according to Izumo fudoki, was worshipped in the Sokinoya Shrine situated about three kilometres east of where the lower Hinokawa flows northward into the coastal plain (see figure 27).
Mt. Kannabi and the Sokinoya Shrine
Izumo fudoki includes for each of the nine districts of Izumo Province a list of shrine names followed by mountain names. The mountains are usually localised relative to the district office, and in four districts one of them was called Kannabiyama, which is thought to have meant a mountain forest (yama) inhabited by kami.15 The Kannabiyama of Izumo district (figure 26) is described as follows:
Kannabiyama. 3 sato 150 ashi [1890m] to the south-east of the district office. 175 tsue high, 15 sato 60 ashi [8208m] circumference. The yashiro of Kiisakami Takahiko no Mikoto of the Sokinoya no yashiro is in a high place (mine) of this mountain. That is why it is called Kannabiyama. (*Izumo fudoki, NKBT 2: 191)
Mt. Bukkyō, the ancient Kannabiyama of Izumo District, seen from the north-west
Photo Gaudenz Domenig, 2019
The text identifies the deity as Kiisakami Takahiko of the Sokinoya Shrine and says the yashiro of this deity is in a mine of Mt. Kannabi. The distance from the district office to the mountain being less than two kilometres, this probably refers to a place at the foot of the mountain close to which the Sokinoya Jinja is situated today.16 From there it is another 1.5 kilometres to the top of the mountain, measured horizontally.
Since mine has come to mean ‘top’ or ‘peak’, it is often assumed that this ancient shrine was originally on the top of the Kannabiyama. However, as noted in the introduction, the view that shrines were originally situated on mountaintops in all probability came up under Buddhist influence, which in the present case has even changed the mountain’s name to Bukkyōzan (Sutra Mountain). As in many other such cases, mine meant a high place on a mountain, and the long phrase, saying that “the yashiro of Kiisakami Takahiko no Mikoto of the Sokinoya no Yashiro is in a mine of this mountain”, probably meant that this deity had two cult places, one on the mountain and one at the foot of the mountain, the latter being called Sokinoya no Yashiro.
The existence of cult places high up on a mountain’s side is also mentioned in another story from Izumo fudoki. It regards the worship at the kannabi mountain of Tatenui District:
Kannabiyama. […]. To the west of the peak there is a stone deity, one tsue in height and one tsue around. More than a hundred stone deities are by the side of the highway [below]. The old people say that Ame no Mikajihime no Mikoto, the wife of Ajisuki Takahikone no Mikoto, came to the village of Taku and gave birth to Tagitsuhiko no Mikoto. At that time, she spoke to him: “This place is good for your mother to give birth safely.” The said stone deity is the august spirit abode (mi-yosashi) of Tagitsuhiko no Mikoto. When [people] pray for rain in case of drought, he always makes rain without fail. (*Izumo fudoki, NKBT 2: 171, 173)
In this case, a ‘stone deity’ some three metres high to the west of the mountain’s top was the ‘spirit abode’ of the deity, whereas many other stone kami by the side of the highway below were apparently offerings dedicated to that deity when worshipping from afar.
Katō Yoshinari (1962) has pointed out that Kiisa may have been the name of the area around the ancient Kannabiyama of Izumo District, while Kiisatsumi was perhaps the ruler of this area who worshipped Kiisakami Takahiko as the guardian deity of his land.17 If so, then the place where, according to Kojiki, the emperor had to build the new miya could have been at the foot of Mt. Kannabi (the present Bukkyōzan), and its name Iwakuma no So no Miya might have alluded to a rocky place high up in the mountain where the deity would be dwelling and occasionally receive offerings as well.18
Such a situation would correspond to what Izumo fudoki suggests for the Sokinoya Jinja. It is therefore understandable that an information panel in the present precinct of the Sokinoya Jinja says that this shrine is thought to be the ancient Iwakuma no So no Miya mentioned in Kojiki. High up in the mountain there is a huge rock about eight metres high and thirty metres in circumference. It is now called Kiisa Iwa or Kiisa Ōiwa (‘large rock of Kiisa’), and a small wooden panel in front of it identifies it as the original mountain shrine (yama no miya motomiya) of the Kiisa Jinja.19
The identification of the Iwakuma no So no Miya with the Sokinoya Jinja in its present location is not convincing, however. The present shrine is too far from the main body of Mt. Kannabi. It is more likely that it was the family shrine of Kiisatsumi who, according to Kojiki, should have served as a priest at the Iwakuma no So no Miya on behalf of the emperor.
A Suitable Site at the Foot of Mt. Kannabi
Although the story in Kojiki does not have to correspond to historical facts, it is tempting to take a closer look at the topography and think about a more likely site where the Iwakuma no So no Miya could have been built.20 Three special features of the topography are noteworthy: (1) Mt. Bukkyō is, at 366 metres, one of the highest mountains in this part of western Izumo; (2) its location is similar to that of Mt. Miwa in Yamato because both are conspicuous mountains situated to the right of the place where an important river enters into a plain; and (3) the boundary where the mountain meets the wide plain in the north (north-west) includes an area where the lowest spurs of the mountain embrace a part of the plain from both sides (figures 27 and 28).
The ancient Mt. Kannabi (right) in relation to the Izumo Grand Shrine at Kizuki (left). The red circle corresponds in length (not in form) to the circumference of the sacred area according to Izumo fudoki
Source: Batholith, Shimane Peninsula Relief Map, SRTM-1, Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain (red points, red circle and approximate course and extension of ancient lakes and rivers have been added)
The Shimane Peninsula and its four parts mentioned in the land-pulling story. (1) Kizuki no mi-saki; (2) Sada no kuni; (3) Kurami no kuni; (4) Miho no saki. The later districts Izumo and Ou are indicated by 0 and 5, respectively. In ancient times, the western inland sea (Lake Shinji) reached further west than shown in this modern map (see figure 27)
Source: Batholith, Shimane Peninsula Relief Map, SRTM-1, Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain (red lines and numbers added)
The area between the protruding spurs is about 700 metres wide where it meets the open plain but narrows to about 200 metres further inside and then branches out into three small valleys. The central valley comes almost straight down from the direction of the mountaintop; at the bottom it is about 60 metres wide where it meets the flat land. From there, it rises for about 300 metres with an average gradient of about 10 per cent before it gets progressively steeper. This central valley now features several farm houses and a Buddhist temple called Honseiji. As a relatively flat part at the foot of the mountain, it would have been an ideal site for an important shrine, roughly corresponding in its relation to the top of the mountain to the location of the Ōmiwa Jinja. From the Honseiji, it is only about 500 metres to the Sokinoya Jinja, where the head priest could have worshipped the ancestor of his own family. The word miya in the name ‘Iwakuma no So no Miya’ tells that a shrine building (not a simple rock site) is meant in Kojiki, but the rest of the name might indicate a rock seat high up on the mountain’s side after which the miya at the foot of the mountain could have been named.
This is of course hypothetical, but if the shrine had been built, that small valley would have been a perfect site for it.
The Political Aspect
Without going into the problem posed by the statement that Kiisatsumi was the ancestor of the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo, it is clear that this statement in Kojiki does not fit with what is known about the later situation at the Izumo Shrine at Kizuki. The head priest of the latter shrine was a member of the Izumo kokusō, as the kuni no miyatsuko family of eastern Izumo was called.21 Either the story in Kojiki is a mere fiction introduced to conclude the land-ceding myth, or the Iwakuma no So no Miya was really built but later abolished because a later government decided to select Kizuki as a new site and to appoint a powerful family from eastern Izumo to hold the hereditary offices of kokusō and head priest of the shrine.
The fact that the former shrine, if it had existed for some time, was not mentioned in Izumo fudoki is understandable because the compilation of that work was completed in 733 under the supervision by Izumo no Omi Hiroshima, the governor of Ou District, who was also the Izumo kokusō and the hereditary chief priest of the shrine at Kizuki. This influential person had of course no interest in making the world remember that there had been an earlier shrine of the Great God of Izumo that had been cared for by a different lineage of kuni no miyatsuko settled in western Izumo. Rather, he can be expected to have tried to ‘correct history’ by eliminating all traces of a past that was in conflict with the situation during his time. This also required an adjustment of the genealogy of the Izumo kokusō, which was done by adopting Kiisatsumi as an alternative name of Kiitaiho, the fourteenth kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo according to their genealogy (Senge 1882).22
Whether the So no Miya of Iwakuma was ever built we cannot know, but the compiler of Kojiki intended to suggest this. To really build the shrine would have been a clever stratagem, because its material existence, together with an appropriate ritual, could have been a visible memorial of the land-ceding myth, indicating that the imperial dynasty had a sacred right to rule the great land which Ōkuninushi had ‘made’ and opened up to agriculture. Later, this stratagem did work with the shrine in Kizuki, which was and is situated on the opposite side of the plain about twelve kilometres north-west of Mt. Kannabi (figure 27).
The Foundation of the Shrine at Kizuki
As we saw in chapter 4, the section about the reign of Emperor Sujin in Nihon shoki includes a story about the treasures which Takehinatori, the ancestor of the Izumo no Omi, had brought down from heaven. The text says that he deposited the treasures in the shrine of Izumo no Ōkami and that the Izumo no Omi had a separate family shrine, but it does not tell us how these two shrines were named and where they were located in Izumo. We may guess from the context that the reference is to the Kizuki Shrine and the Kumano Shrine of Ou District, but the text leaves the question open. Similarly, under the much later date Saimei 5 (659 CE), Nihon shoki records that the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo was ordered to repair a shrine (kami no miya), but neither the name of that kuni no miyatsuko nor that of the shrine, nor the location of the shrine in Izumo, are specified. Since the text continues with two stories that are set in the district of Ou, it is usually assumed that the Kumano Shrine of Ou is the one being referred to (NKBT 68: 340n22), but this is sometimes still contested in favour of the shrine in Kizuki. It therefore seems to be a fact that the location of Ōnamuchi’s shrine in Izumo is not mentioned anywhere in Nihon shoki. Considering the importance and the alleged age of this shrine, this is strange and raises the suspicion that the shrine at Kizuki may not have existed when Nihon shoki was compiled. Although the lineage of the Izumo kokusō could already be mentioned in Nihon shoki, the site for the shrine was not identified. It was Izumo fudoki, compiled thirteen years later in 733, that first mentions the shrine as
Kizuki
杵築 no sato. It is 28 sato and 60 ashi north-west of the district office. After Yatsukamizu Omitsuno no Mikoto had concluded the land-pulling they built the shrine (miya) of the great deity who made the [land] below heaven. All the sovereign land deities (sumegami) gathered at the place of the miya and stamped (tsuki築 ) the ground with a pounder (ki杵 ). Therefore, it was called Kizuki寸付 . In the year Jinki 3 [726] the characters寸付 were changed to杵築 . (*Izumo fudoki, NKBT 2: 181)
This entry no doubt refers to the Izumo Taisha in Kizuki (figure 30) and to the year 726 as the date when the name Kizuki was given a new meaning to memorise the stamping of the ground when the shrine was built. The date is six years after Nihon shoki was completed and might perhaps indicate the time when the shrine was really founded. The place name Kizuki is older. As the fudoki entry indicates, it was formerly written
As Torigoe Kenzaburō has pointed out, according to the genealogy of the Izumo kokusō, it was in 708 that Hatayasu no Omi became kuni no miyatsuko. He held this position for fourteen years until 721 and, as a note in the same genealogy adds, he was the first to move his dwelling from Ōba in Ou District to Kizuki (Torigoe 2006: 119). Considering the fact that Kan’yogoto was first presented at the court in 716, Torigoe concludes that the shrine in Kizuki was not founded before the compilation of Kojiki in 712 (Torigoe 2006: 119–38). This would explain why Kojiki still mentions Kiisatsumi as the first kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo.
The Land-Pulling Myth and the Four Kannabi of Izumo
As noted, the compilation of Izumo fudoki was supervised by the powerful Izumo no Omi Hiroshima, who had a genuine interest to backdate the shrine’s foundation. The passage quoted from Izumo fudoki therefore suggests that the new writing of the name Kizuki memorised the pounding of the earth in hoary antiquity when the god Yatsukamizu Omitsuno had formed the land mass of the Shimane Peninsula. Ironically, however, the famous story of the ‘land-pulling’ (kunihiki) is not only an etiological myth but also a land-making story that tells of the eastward extension of a territory along the Shimane Peninsula, an event that could have happened in history not long before Izumo fudoki was compiled. Read as an etiological myth (figure 28), the story says that the god formed the peninsula by cutting off its four parts from somewhere else, one after the other, pulling them across the sea and stitching them to the part that already existed. Moreover, he also moors the first and the last part to two stakes on the mainland; the stakes later become mountains and the ropes leave their traces in a long beach (in the west) and a long peninsula (in the east).23
The difficulties in understanding the text are limited to several pillow words (makura kotoba) and a long phrase that is repeated in each of the four parts and includes poetic images, some of which are not well understood. This phrase describes the act of cutting off and pulling land from another place to add it to the land already here. It has been translated thus:
[He] took the spade of the maiden’s breast, pushed it into the cape like into the gill of a large fish, shook it round like the flag-shaped pampas-grass-ears, and took off the land. Then, putting a three-ply rope upon the land, he pulled it slowly and slowly, like a river-boat, in the tackling- and-tackling manner of a frost wicker-basket, saying: “Land come! Land come!” The land thus joined is … (Kōno 1941: 157)
If we abbreviate this part and omit all pillow words and honorifics, we can get a simplified version of the story that is sufficient as a basis for the interpretation to be presented here. Numbers refer to the areas distinguished in figure 28.
The reason why Ou was named.
Yatsukamizu Omitsuno spoke: “Izumo was first made as a small land; so, I will take and stitch to it.”
“If I look to Shiragi no misaki and ask if there is surplus land, there is surplus land”, he spoke. He took the spade … took off … pulled … and said: “Come land! Come land!” The land thus pulled and stitched is Kizuki no misaki (1), backward from Kozu.
The stake which he firmly fixed is the boundary between Iwami no kuni and Izumo no kuni, called Sahimeyama; again, the rope held and pulled is the long beach of Sono.
“If I look to Kitado no saki no kuni and ask if there is surplus land, there is surplus land”, he spoke. He took the spade … took off … pulled … and said: “Come land! Come land!” The land thus pulled and stitched is Sada no kuni (2), backward from Taku.
“If I look to Kitado no nunami no kuni and ask if there is surplus land, there is surplus land”, he spoke. He took the spade … took off … pulled … and said: “Come land! Come land!” The land thus pulled and stitched is Kurami no kuni (3) inward from Tashimi.
“If I look to Koshi no Tsutsu no misaki and ask if there is surplus land, there is surplus land”, he spoke. He took the spade … took off … pulled … and said: “Come land! Come land!” The land thus pulled and stitched is Miho no saki (4).
The rope held and pulled is the island Yomi; the stake which he firmly fixed is Mount Hinokami of Hōki no kuni.
“Now the enlargement of the land is concluded”, he spoke. Setting up his staff in the grove of Ou, he said: “Oe”. This is why Ou was named so. (*NKBT 2: 99–103)
Two circumstances also allow a reading of the text as a land-making story: (1) each time the god begins with an act of divining, represented by the question-and-answer pattern, before he starts cutting off and adding a new piece of surplus land; and (2) he finally puts his staff into the ground of a sacred grove. These two ritual acts correspond to what our model of the ritual procedure requires. We therefore have a story that tells of a ‘small Izumo’ in the west that was enlarged by the successive addition of four new parts. Two of these were established as kuni (‘territories’), and two as saki (‘promontories’). Each saki apparently belonged to a kuni, namely, Kizuki to Izumo and Miho to Kurami, and both pairs later combined to form the districts of Izumo and Shimane, respectively.
Another thing we notice if we compare our model of the land-taking ritual with the land-pulling story is that the story ends in a grove belonging to Ou, whereas the ritual rather requires that it should end where the adding of Miho no saki is concluded. Since this promontory belonged to Kurami, the final sacred grove should be expected to belong to Kurami. So, why does the text say that the process ended in a grove of Ou?
To understand this, we must consider that by the time Izumo fudoki was concluded in 733, Izumo no Omi Hiroshima was not only the supervisor of the compilation of Izumo fudoki but also the head of the Izumo kokusō family and head priest of the shrine at Kizuki. This required that his family, which was settled in the Ou River valley on the mainland, had to claim a very long tradition as the ruling political power in the area. Whereas the story of the extension of ‘small Izumo’ along the peninsula suggests that a power of western Izumo moved its political centre to eastern Izumo, the fudoki had to legitimise the later political situation when the district with this political centre was Ou and ruled by the Izumo kokusō. To achieve this, the compilers had to adapt the land-pulling story in the interest of the kokusō family by using the simple stratagem of replacing the original name in the last sentence by that of Ou. In this way, they created the illusion that Ou had always been the power centre of Izumo, ever since, according to the etiological myth, the god Omitsuno created the landmass of the Shimane Peninsula.
So far, our theoretical model helps us to understand that the land-pulling myth has probably been adapted to serve as a charter myth. We could leave it at that, but if we also wonder where the grove of Ou was situated, we face another problem that calls for further analysis. Although Izumo fudoki usually locates important places by indicating the direction and distance from another place, it leaves it open where that ‘grove of Ou’ was situated. We only learn from a note in small characters that it was a small elevation to the north-east of the district office. The location of the district office is usually assumed to have been close to the provincial office, whose remains have been excavated about 800 metres south-east of the southern foot of Mt. Kannabi. However, the entry for Kannabiyama in Izumo fudoki locates this mountain 3 sato 129 ashi (1,852 metres) true north of the district office (NKBT 2: 117), which means that the district office should rather have been situated at the entry to the Ou valley (4 in figure 29).24 In either case, the grove of Ou could not be identified with the kannabi of Ou.
The four kannabi of four districts mentioned in Izumo fudoki. (1) Izumo; (2) Tatenui; (3) Aika; (4) Ou. Before the northern district boundary of Ou followed the river between the two inland seas it could have followed the hills, so that the kannabi of Ou (4) could have been a boundary mountain of the earlier Kurami no kuni
Source: Batholith, Shimane Peninsula Relief Map, SRTM-1, Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain (red points and numbers added)
Knowing from Izumo fudoki that four districts of Izumo had a kannabi mountain, and that one of them was situated in Ou District, we may wonder why the fudoki does not say that the god Omitsuno set up his staff in the kannabi of Ou. A close look at the topography suggests an unexpected answer (4 in figure 29). As the boundaries of older kuni often followed the course of mountains, the kannabi mountain of Ou District could have formerly been a southern boundary mountain of the earlier Kurami no kuni and in its northern part could have been the kannabi of Kurami. But by the time Izumo fudoki was compiled, the district boundary followed the river between the two inland seas, so that this mountain had come to lie in Ou District, where it continued to be called kannabiyama, although it had lost that function.25 Assuming that the kannabi had earlier belonged to Kurami no kuni, the people of the time would have remembered this, which would explain why the compilers of Izumo fudoki could not let the land-pulling end there. To achieve their goal, they had to make the old story end in their own district, which they did by writing that it ended in a ‘grove of Ou’.
Since, on the other hand, they also could not deny the existence of that mountain still called Kannabiyama, they represented it as a hill of minor importance. In the list of the seven mountains of Ou District, they put it at the very end, only adding that it was situated true north of the district office and, in small characters, that it had fir trees in the east and grass growing on three sides. By contrast, the other three kannabi mentioned in Izumo fudoki are all given first place among the mountains of the respective districts; the one of Izumo District is even put before Mt. Misaki, the mountain in the back of the Izumo Taisha at Kizuki (NKBT 2: 191).
Seeing the possibility that an earlier version of the land-pulling myth could have ended in a kannabi belonging to Kurami, we may finally also wonder if two of the three other kannabi of Izumo had perhaps likewise been related to the land-pulling story. Having already discussed the kannabi of the district of Izumo, we know that it belonged to former Izumo no kuni, so that the integration of Kizuki no misaki as a dependant part could have ended with a ceremony in that kannabi. Sada no kuni had also its own kannabi, but as it was later divided into the districts of Aika and Tatenui, its kannabi then came to lie in Aika District.25
We cannot conclude from these observations that an earlier version of the land-pulling myth must have also mentioned the names of the kannabi of Izumo, Sada and Kurami; it was not necessary to say each time how the adding of a territory (kuni) or promontory (misaki, saki) ended. The story of Iwa no Ōkami discussed in chapter 3 also first mentions the claiming of various territories and says only at the very end how and where the whole land-making process ended. Nevertheless, seeing that the land-pulling myth clearly stands out through ritual speech and the use of the stylistic element of repetition, it seems likely that an earlier version of this story might also have mentioned the grove or kannabi in which each of the four phases ended.26
To interpret the land-pulling myth in the way proposed means interpreting it as another charter myth that was intended to legitimate the new political situation at the time when Izumo fudoki was compiled. In real history, it may have been only a few decades or years before Izumo fudoki was compiled in 733 that a family settled in the Ou River valley was able to take over the office of kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo. In order to be able to take this office and that of the hereditary head priest of the new shrine, the family claimed descent from Ame no Hohi, a son of Amaterasu, or of Ame no Hohi’s son Takehinateru. The head priest was then appointed Izumo no Omi and district governor of Ou, but he had to leave the office of provincial governor to a kokushi dispatched from the central government of the ritsuryō state, for the first time perhaps in the year 708, as Torigoe has suggested. By 720 the lineage of the Izumo no Omi is mentioned in Nihon shoki in the story about Takehinateru’s treasures, but the fact that the location of the shrine is not mentioned in the text suggests that the shrine had perhaps not yet been built by that time.27 By contrast, the Kiisatsumi mentioned as the first kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo in Kojiki was related to Mt. Kannabi of western Izumo and belonged to a family that probably claimed descent from Kamimusubi, the last of the three initial deities that came into existence in heaven according to Kojiki.28 Although he could therefore be called a heavenly descendant, he is not even mentioned in Nihon shoki; for according to the doctrine of this other chronicle, the heavenly descendants are supposed to be descendants of Amaterasu and/or Takamimusubi. Since the newer doctrine of Nihon shoki prevailed, the double office of kuninomiyatsuko and head priest at Kizuki was finally entrusted to a different linage that claimed descent from a son or grandson of Amaterasu.
The shrine (figure 30) was then built at Kizuki in western Izumo, although the priest family was settled in Ou of eastern Izumo. As briefly mentioned at the end of chapter 4, a possible reason for the choice of Kizuki could have been the topography, which allowed the shrine to be built at the foot of a mountain while facing south (4 in figure 31).
The inner precinct of the Izumo Taisha at Kizuki
Photo Gaudenz Domenig, 1962
Mythically important places along the Hinokawa in relation to the Shimane Peninsula and Ou in eastern Izumo. (1) Susanoo at Torikami in the upper courses; (2) Susanoo dwells at Suga; (3) Mt. Kannabi of Izumo District; (4) Kizuki; (5) Cape Miho; (6) Ou
Map by the author
Summing Up
I have argued in this chapter in favour of interpreting the story about Homuchiwake and the founding of a shrine in Izumo as the foundation story of the Izumo Shrine according to Kojiki. However, Kojiki suggests that this shrine was initially intended to be built at Mt. Kannabi of Izumo District, and the priest family was not the same as that of the later shrine in Kizuki.
The kunihiki (‘land-pulling’) myth has been analysed because it makes another good case for demonstrating that land-taking in early Japan was an activity that involved a ritual procedure such as that described in the introduction. The myth underscores, with its repeated question-and-answer pattern, the importance of starting an act of land-taking with divining and does not forget to also say that the ritual ended in a sacred grove and at another place. The heuristic value of the theoretical model could be shown by introducing the hypothesis that an earlier version of the story probably also mentioned three of the four kannabi of Izumo, which have found no satisfactory explanation in the past.
Historically, the shift of the power centre to Ou may have been a recent development at the time when Izumo fudoki was compiled; for it was apparently not yet known when the author of Kojiki introduced Kiisatsumi of western Izumo as the ancestor of the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo. This also speaks in favour of regarding the doctrine of Kojiki as representing an older idea about the foundation of the Izumo Shrine than the one that was later realised with the building of the Izumo Taisha at Kizuki.
Looking at things in this perspective, it is perhaps also relevant that Cape Miho, the last part of the Shimane Peninsula opened up according to the land-pulling myth (5 in figure 31), is also the place where, according to Kojiki, Sukunabikona appears and meets Ōkuninushi, and from where the two together begin to open up and ‘make’ the great land to be ruled by the future emperors (chapter 4). When Ōkuninushi later cedes the rule of that land to the heavenly descendants, he does so at the beach of Inasa (near 4 in figure 31), but only after his son Kotoshironushi has first agreed to this at Cape Miho, at the other end of the peninsula.
Could it be that the fudoki myth of the gradual extension of ‘small Izumo’ eastward along the Shimane Peninsula was conceived to form a link between the old mythology related to the river system of the Hinokawa, where Susanoo had descended from heaven, and the myth of the making of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, the great land to be ruled by the future emperors?
Philippi’s suggestion [‘upon you’] does not fit with the context. OJ samorafu also meant to wait for the passing of time (JKDJ: 341) and this is what Ōkuninushi must now do because it will take a long time until he gets the shrine he has demanded.
Aston (I: 69n3), referring to the Nihon shoki version, says: ‘The eighty-road-windings are put for a long journey, i.e. to Yomi or Hades, or rather for Yomi itself’ (similarly, Antoni 2012: 76; Heldt 2014: 47). Philippi (1968: 134n7) thinks that with yaso kumade ‘a far-removed place’ is meant and that Ōkuninushi probably ‘merely retires to the unseen world of the spirit’.
The poem (Man’yōshū no. 427) begins with momotarazu yaso kuma saka ni tamuke seba (“if you make tamuke-offerings at the slope of (less than a hundred) eighty nooks”). JKDJ, article kumade, mentions only bending roads and rivers but says that the word is composed of kuma (‘corner, nook’) and the suffix te, which can mean ‘place’.
This is supported by Kan’yogoto, the ‘divine congratulary words’ (OJ kumuyogoto) which each governor of Izumo later used to recite at court some time after his appointment. See the translations by Haguenauer (1929) and Philippi (1959). This text says that after having ceded the rule of the land, Ōnamuchi attached his nigimitama to a large mirror dedicated to the spirit of Ōmononushi and had it dwell in the sacred grove of Ōmiwa, whereas he himself dwelled peacefully in the shrine at Kizuki. This corresponds to the ideology of the later Izumo Shrine, according to which the place was from the beginning at Kizuki.
See the section ‘Cult Marks Replaced by Shrine Buildings’ in chapter 9.
Philippi: 219–20; Aston I: 174–75. See also the story about the divining boats in chapter 1.
Nihon shoki dates the episode of the crying swan to Suinin 23, tenth month, and the foundation of the Ise Shrine between Suinin 25, third month, and 26, eighth month. Since the compilers knew Kojiki but advocated the doctrine that the Izumo Shrine had existed since the god age, they may have chosen a date after the omen of the crying swan to suggest that Kojiki was wrong and that it was the Ise Shrine that was built at that time.
Kojiki, NKBT 1: 197–201; cf. Philippi: 220–23.
Yamaguchi and Kōnoshi (1997) ignore the fact that the emperor finally orders the shrine to be ‘built’ (instead of ‘repaired’) and interpret the obvious analogy with the land-ceding myth as a mere correspondence in a different later context. They assume that Ōkuninushi’s request of a shrine must have been met earlier but that this shrine now apparently needed repair (SNKBZ 1: 207n3).
Kojiki, Philippi: 98. See part E of the overview of the god age mythology given at the beginning of chapter 4.
In Kojiki and Nihon shoki, the terms nigimitama and aramitama only appear in the story of Jingū Kogō’s conquest of Shiragi (see chapter 1). Basically, the two terms seem to be related to movement and rest, respectively. The aramitama was the dynamic aspect of a deity in motion and action and could be carried along on a journey, whereas the nigimitama rather stayed fixed to a certain place. Thus, when a spirit was moved from the original place to a new one it was the aramitama that was moved and enshrined at the new place, but through worship the aramitama could then be turned again into a nigimitama. Sometimes both aspects were worshipped at the same place. In the precinct of the Inner Shrine at Ise, Amaterasu’s nigimitama is worshipped in the main hall and her aramitama in the Aramatsuri no Miya, a smaller shrine behind the main shrine.
The names given in Kojiki as aliases of Ōkuninushi no kami are Ōnamuchi no kami, Ashihara Shikoo no kami, Yachihoko no kami and Utsushi-kunitama no kami (NKBT 1: 91; Philippi: 92). Nihon shoki quotes a source that mentions six aliases of Ōkuninushi no kami, namely, Ōmononushi no kami, Kunitsukuri no Ōnamuchi no Mikoto, Ashihara no Shikoo, Yachihoko no kami, Ōkunitama no kami and Utsushikunitama no kami (NKBT 67: 128; Aston I: 59). Note that only the list in Nihon shoki contains Ōmononushi as an alias of Ōnamuchi/Ōkuninushi and mentions Ashihara no Shikoo without calling him a kami.
Kojiki, NKBT 1: 161–62, 181–82; Philippi: 178–79, 201–204; Nihon shoki, NKBT 67: 246–47; Aston I: 158.
See the Introduction and the section ‘Founder Worship’ in chapter 8.
Kannabi: OJ kamunabi. The dictionary of Old Japanese (JKDJ: 224) renders the meaning as kami no imasu tokoro (‘a place where kami are’) or as kami no yadoru basho (‘a place where kami are dwelling’) and analyses the word as kamu-na-bi, with bi meaning a place as in other compounds designating localities such as mountains and rivers. According to another common interpretation, the element nabi rather comes from the verb nabu, ‘to hide’, so that kannabi would mean ‘kami hiding’ (NKBT 2: 191n15). A further interpretation is based on the use of nabi and related words with the meaning ‘snake’ (Takasaki 1962: 21–42).
Following the NKBT edition, I read the distances as sato and ashi. 1 sato = 300 ashi = 540 metres (Nara period measurement according to Dettmer 2005: 8).
Katō 1962: 333. Others have suggested that Kiisatsumi was also worshipped in that shrine. See the Izumo Oyashiro Club, a website with illustrated reports on numerous shrines of Shimane Prefecture, http://www2.izumo-net.ne.jp/oyashiro/izumo/cat124/. Kiisatsumi might be the name of a deity (compare yamatsumi, ‘mountain deity’), but considering the phonetic difference of i and ï, the word kami in Kiisakami means ‘chief’, not deity (kamï). Whereas Kojiki therefore seems to call a chief by his posthumous name Kiisatsumi, Izumo fudoki uses a chief’s name (Kiisakami) as the name of the deity worshipped. This seems to support the argument that there was a custom of posthumous deification of founders of territories in early Japan (see chapter 8).
Iwakuma means ‘rocky nook’ and the character
A Kiisa no Yashiro is already mentioned in a shrine list of Izumo fudoki (NKBT 2: 190) and later mentioned as a non-registered shrine in the precinct of the Sokinoya Jinja in documents dated 1682 and 1717 (Yoshioka 1983: 535). For a map of Bukkyōzan, showing the location of various rock sites and their names, and a photograph of the Kiisa Ōiwa, see Hirano 2016: 238 and colour photo 16.
Murai Yasuhiko (2013) has also come to the conclusion that the story from Kojiki deserves full attention with respect to the foundation of Izumo Taisha. He climbed Mt. Bukkyō and found a rock formation on the very top which he interprets as an ancient iwaza and as the place where ‘the spirit of Izumo Taisha’ was dwelling before the shrine in Kizuki was built. Assuming that the god’s cult place was then only an open-air rock seat (iwaza), he thinks that the miya (‘palace’, ‘shrine’) mentioned in the land-ceding myth of Kojiki was built later, in 659 (Seimei 5), when Nihon shoki records that the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo was ordered to repair a shrine (Murai 2013: 29–33, 204–213).
Kokusō is the Sino-Japanese spelling of the same Chinese characters which normally are read kuni no miyatsuko. The form kokusō was only used for the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo serving at the shrine in Kizuki.
The genealogy given in the Japanese Wikipedia article on ‘Izumo kokusō’ has a brief note added to the name of Kiitaiho no Mikoto, saying that Kiisatsumi mentioned in Kojiki ‘is said to be the same person’. Family conflicts around 1344 resulted in the separation of the kokusō into two lineages, Senge and Kitajima, who until the late nineteenth century took the position of Izumo kokusō by turns. After that, both lineages formed their own religious associations (Izumo Ōyashirokyō and Izumo kyō, respectively) and the position of the head priest was taken over by the Senge family (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/出雲国造). When the newly renovated Izumo Taisha was inaugurated in 2013, the head priest was Senge Takamasa, the 84th Izumo kokusō.
The parts about mooring could also be based on a different etiological myth, according to which the peninsula would originally have been a long island floating in the sea.
The first assumption is based on another entry in Izumo fudoki that says that the crossroad north of the provincial office and the district office of Ou was 21 sato west of the Nogi bridge (NKBT 2: 247). But the fact that the crossroad was north of both offices does not have to mean that these offices were in the same place.
The foundation story of the kannabi of Tatenui by Ame no Mikajihime has already been quoted (p. 141). Although it was apparently an old and important sacred grove, it perhaps achieved the status of a kannabi only when Sada no kuni was later divided into the two districts of Aika and Tatenui.
The use of the word kannabi instead of mori (‘grove’) might have meant that a kannabi was dedicated to the guardian deity of a larger territory such as an old kuni or a later district of the ritsuryō state. This understanding is suggested by Kan’yogoto, where it is said that Ōnamuchi caused his nigi-mitama to dwell in the kannabi of Ōmiwa (chapter 4; Philippi 1959: 74) while the mitama of three other deities were to dwell in three other kannabi of Yamato, all serving the emperors as close guardian deities. Since the four kannabi of Izumo were positioned around lake Shinji (the western inland sea; figure 29) it is sometimes speculated that their deities might have guarded that lake, but there is no evidence for that and it does not seem to make sense.
Carlqvist (2010) has presented a new translation of the land-pulling myth together with a discussion that considers different perspectives. In essence he concludes that “the land-pulling myth forms part of a message expressing that the province desires and has the legitimacy to govern itself” (2010: 214). By contrast, I think that the Izumo no Omi followed the new policy of the central government regarding the shrine in Kizuki and that this was the reason why he was so powerful in Izumo.
The entry for Shitsunu no sato in Izumo fudoki (NKBT 2: 181) says that Amatsukichikami Takahiko was a son of Kamimusubi, but the context suggests that his correct name was Ama-tsu Kiisakami Takahiko (NKBT 2: 180n2). Consequently, the ancestor of the kuni no miyatsuko of Izumo according to Kojiki was also a descendant of Kamimusubi. Kojiki follows a probably earlier understanding which has also left traces in another part of Izumo fudoki, where it is Kamimusubi (instead of Takamimusubi) who orders the building of the shrine for Ōkuninushi (NKBT 2: 167; Aoki 1971: 110).