Takeminakata
Takeminakata, also known as Minakatatomi or Takeminakatatomi, is a kami in Japanese mythology. Also known as Suwa Myōjin or Suwa Daimyōjin after Suwa Grand Shrine in Nagano Prefecture in which he is enshrined alongside his consort Yasakatome, Takeminakata is historically worshiped as a god of wind, water and agriculture, as well as a patron of hunting and warfare, in which capacity he enjoyed a particularly fervent cult from various samurai clans during the medieval period such as the Hōjō or the Takeda. Takeminakata was also held to be the mythical ancestor of certain families who once served at the shrine as priests, foremost among them being the Suwa clan, the high priests of the Upper Shrine of Suwa who were also revered as living vessels of the god.
There are multiple, often conflicting accounts regarding the deity. The mythology of the imperial court as recorded in the Kojiki and the Sendai Kuji Hongi portrays Takeminakata as a son of the god Ōkuninushi who was defeated by the heavenly deity Takemikazuchi and fled to Lake Suwa. Local traditions from Suwa itself, however, present markedly different narratives. These portray him, for example, as an invading deity who subjugated the area's indigenous gods, as an unseen divine presence that chose a young boy as its human embodiment, or as a serpentine or dragon-like being. As worship of the Suwa deity spread throughout Japan from the medieval period onward, additional legends developed, shaped by regional adaptation and the syncretism of Buddhism and Shinto. These later stories often diverged from both Suwa's own traditions and the Yamato court's account, portraying the Suwa deity, for example, as a king from India who manifested in Japan, or identifying him with figures such as the warrior Kōga Saburō.
Name
The god is named 'Takeminakata-no-Kami' in both the Kojiki and the 'Sendai Kuji Hongi'. Variants of the name found in the imperially commissioned national histories and other literary sources include the following:- Minakatatomi-no-Kami
- Minakatatomi-no-Mikoto-no-Kami
- Takeminakatatomi-no-Mikoto
- Takeminakatatomi-no-Mikoto-no-Kami
- The Edo period kokugaku scholar Motoori Norinaga explained both take- and mi- as honorifics, with kata as yet another tatae-na meaning "hard" or "firm". Basil Chamberlain followed Motoori's lead and rendered the god's name as 'Brave-August-Name-Firm' in his translation of the Kojiki.
- Ōta Akira interpreted take-, mi- and -tomi as honorifics and took Nakata to be a place name: Nakata District in Awa Province, where stands. Ōwa Iwao suggests that the presence of Azumi people in both Awa and Shinano, as well as the possible connection between the Azumi and the Lower Shrine of Suwa, may explain the similarity between 'Takeminakata' and 'Takeminatomi'.
- Minakata has also been linked to the Munakata of Kyushu. Matsuoka Shizuo interpreted Minakatatomi as originally being a goddess – citing the fact that the deities of Munakata shrine were female – that was later conflated with the male god Takeminakata.
- Another explanation proposes minakata to mean "south". A variant of this hypothesis sees the name as hinting at a connection between the god and metalworking, in which the southern direction is important: Mayumi Tsunetada for instance proposed that Takeminakata's name refers to the southern pillar of a takadono. Gustav Heldt's translation of the Kojiki, where the name is translated as 'Brave Southward Smelter', follows this interpretation.
- Yet another theory interprets mi- to mean "water", pointing to the god being a water deity perhaps associated with Lake Suwa. The full name is thought to derive from a word denoting a body of water or a waterside region such as 水潟 or 水県 - "water" + agata "country.
- An alternative explanation for the word -tomi'' is to link it with dialectal words for "snake", thereby seeing the name as hinting to the god being a kind of serpentine water deity.
''Suwa Daimyōjin''
Other epithets applied to the Suwa deity include Nangū Daimyōjin, Hosshō Daimyōjin, a combination of the two such as Nangū Hosshō Daimyōjin, or Suwa Hosshō Kamishimo ''Daimyōjin. Some of the war banners used by Sengoku daimyō Takeda Shingen for instance contain the inscription Suwa Nangū Hosshō Kamishimo / Jōge Daimyōjin. A hanging scroll given by Emperor Go-Nara to the Upper Shrine in 1553, written in the emperor's own calligraphy, refers to the god as Suwa Shōichii Nangū Hossho Daimyōjin.
File:Size of Lake Suwa.png|thumb|left|300px|Comparison of Lake Suwa at its prime with its current size. Also shown are two of the four shrines that comprise Suwa Taisha.
A number of explanations have been proposed for the origin of the term Nangū. One theory posits it to refer to the geographical location of the Upper Suwa Shrine, which is located southeast of Lake Suwa, at the southern half of Shinano Province, while another claims it to be derived from 'Minakatatomi', one of the variant names for the deity, with minakata being apparently understood to mean "south". The term has also been interpreted to come from the medieval belief that the Suwa deity was the guardian of the south side of the imperial palace or the Shinto-Buddhist concept that the god is an enlightened being who manifested in this world, which in Buddhist cosmology is the southern continent of Jambudvīpa.
Aside from Suwa Shrine, Nangū was also applied to Kanayamahiko Shrine in Mino Province and Aekuni Shrine in Iga Province. A song in the late Heian period anthology Ryōjin Hishō associates the three shrines together, with Suwa Shrine being identified as the "head" of the three Nangū shrines, the shrine at Mino as the "midmost shrine", and the shrine at Iga as the "youngest shrine" .''
Hosshō, meanwhile, is believed to refer to the concept of the dharmakāya, the formless, transcendent ultimate truth that is the source of all buddhas, which are its physical manifestations. A certain medieval legend claims that the Suwa deity chose an eight-year-old boy to become his priest while declaring: "I have no body and so make this priest my body".
Mythology
In imperial mythology
Parentage
Takeminakata is portrayed in both the Kojiki and the Sendai Kuji Hongi as a son of the god Ōkuninushi, although the former does not include him in its genealogy of Ōkuninushi's children. The Kuji Hongi meanwhile identifies him as the son of Ōnamuchi with one of his wives, Nunakawahime of Koshi.Defeat by Takemikazuchi
Takeminakata appears in both the Kojiki and the Kuji Hongi in the context of Ōkuninushi's "transfer of the land" to the amatsukami, the gods of the heavenly realm of Takamagahara.When the heavenly deities, headed by the sun goddess Amaterasu and/or the primordial deity Takamimusubi, sent Takemikazuchi and another messenger to demand that Ōkuninushi relinquish his authority over the earthly realm of Ashihara no Nakatsukuni to Amaterasu's progeny, he told the messengers to consult his son Kotoshironushi, who immediately accepted their demands and advised his father to do likewise. Upon being asked if he had any other sons who ought to express their opinion, Ōkuninushi told the messengers that he had another son named Takeminakata. Takeminakata then appeared, bearing a heavy boulder on his fingertips, challenging Takemikazuchi to a test of strength. Takeminakata attempted to grab the messenger's arm, but Takemikazuchi transformed them into a column of ice and then a sword blade, frightening him. Takemikazuchi then retaliated by grasping and crushing Takeminakata's arm "like a young reed." The defeated god fled to "the sea of Suwa in the land of Shinano," where he was cornered. To save his life, Takeminakata vowed never to leave Suwa and gave his assent to his father's and brother's decision. With Takeminakata's surrender, Ōkuninushi finally ceded the land to the amatsukami and withdrew himself into the unseen spirit world.
Variants and retellings
''Suwa Daimyōjin Ekotoba''
The opening section of the Suwa Daimyōjin Ekotoba, a Nanboku-chō period compilation of legends and other information regarding Suwa Shrine and its festivals completed in 1356, retells the Kuji Hongi version of this story, albeit with Takeminakata's shameful defeat in the hands of Takemikazuchi notably omitted.Originally, it was believed that the compiler, Suwa Enchū, a member of a branch of the Suwa clan based in Kyoto, deliberately edited the story to cast the shrine's deity in a more favorable light. However, recent scholarship by Ryōtarō Maeda suggests Enchū did not have access to the Kuji Hongi text itself; rather, he appears to have relied on an abridged excerpt titled "The Matter of Suwa Shrine" that happened to omit the passage describing Takeminakata’s defeat. This text is found appended to the Kojiki Jōkan-shō, a manuscript copy of the Kojiki
File:諏方社事 - Suwa-sha no Koto.png|thumb|Part of "The Matter of Suwa Shrine" appended to the Shinpuku-ji Kojiki Jōkan-shō. The omission of the passage recounting Takeminakata's defeat is marked with an 云々
This excerpt is thought to have been produced by the Urabe clan, a priestly lineage associated with the Yoshida and Hirano Shrines in Kyoto influential in the Department of Divinities. The Urabe frequently utilized the Kuji Hongi as a primary reference for inquiries regarding shrine origins. During his research for what would become the Ekotoba, Enchū is known to have consulted with two Urabe clan members—Urabe Kanetoyo of the Yoshida branch, then serving as senior assistant director of the Jingi-kan, and Urabe Kanemae of the Hirano branch. It is highly probable that one of these men provided Enchū with the redacted account.
The ambiguity in the classical Chinese syntax also allowed Enchū to reinterpret the narrative. While the original myth has Takemikazuchi transforming his own arm into ice and a sword, the Ekotoba presents it as Takeminakata manifesting these elements as a display of his power. This reinterpretation transformed Takeminakata from a defeated figure into a triumphant god who chose to remain in Suwa of his own volition.
A Shinto-Buddhist liturgical text composed by Enchū around the same time period as the Ekotoba, the Suwa Daimyōjin Koshiki, makes use of the Kugi Hongi account in a similar vein:
This more heroic depiction of Takeminakata in the Ekotoba and the Kōshiki had a lasting impact, especially before the Kojiki became widely popular during the Edo period. It introduced this version of the myth to the Suwa region, where it influenced subsequent texts.
According to Maeda, the Ekotoba was probably not introduced to Suwa before the 17th century, although the Kōshiki seems to have been known earlier among Suwa Shrine’s priestly families, as indicated by allusions in late 15th-century documents produced by the Upper Shrine’s Moriya clan. Over time, the Ekotoba gained acceptance among Suwa’s priestly clans, who produced numerous copies of it. For example, the Shinshu Suwa Daimyōjin Engi, written in 1684 by the hatamoto Suwa Morieda, the younger brother of Suwa Tadaharu, the third daimyō of Takashima Domain, retells the reinterpreted kuni-yuzuri myth. Morieda framed Takeminakata's actions in a Neo-Confucian light, comparing his ceding of the land to a meritorious act of filial piety comparable to Taibo's renunciation of the throne of Zhou.
Even in the 19th century, when knowledge of the Kojiki and its less flattering account of Takeminakata's defeat became more widespread, this positive reinterpretation persisted within Suwa: a mid-19th century genealogical chart of Takeminakata issued by the Upper Shrine for instance quotes the Shinshu Suwa Daimyōjin Engi. A document submitted in 1834 to the Commissioner of Shrines and Temples by the Lower Shrine's Momoi clan of priests relates the following:
A third text found in the Moriya family archives titled "The Origin of Suwa Daimyōjin" features Takeminakata striking fear into Futsunushi and Takemikazuchi after displaying his power to them, only agreeing to cede Ashihara no Nakatsukuni after he was convinced by their reasoning. The three then go to Suwa, where they defeat the local deity Moriya.