Chapter 8 Japan 309“cut-and-paste” method with complete abandon. Rather, certain narrative
structures and paradigms were culturally available when these texts were
committed to writing and given their final textual form. One such structure
or paradigm was the ordeal at the time of the niiname-sai that proved the
legitimacy or illegitimacy of an individual’s claim to the throne. (1989:122)It is an early example of the “invention of tradition,” which wonderfully suc-
ceeded, for the divinity of the emperor, or tenno, himself a living kami, has been
treated as truth itself until the postwar period when Emperor Hirohito
renounced all claims to divinity in 1946.
Prior to the triumph of the Yamato line, other great families had similar
myths of the kami origins of their ancestors. For instance, the Mononobe clan
had an ancestral kami who descended from heaven in a stone boat bringing 10
treasures, including two mirrors, a sword, jewels with magical powers, and a
scarf that repelled insects. He landed on Mt. Ikaruga in Kawachi Province.
Archaeology supports the ritual ties of powerful uji to sacred spots in the hills
where objects like those described in the myths (bronze mirrors, swords) have
been found, and many of the hill locations are still sacred. However, it was the
myth version and rituals of the Yamato line that won the day—and history.
The Yamato state’s competition with Korea was very much a part of the
picture at that time. Sun worship was important in the Korean courts, and
founders of royal lines were often named children of the sun. The Yamato uji
thus abandoned their earlier tutelary kami, Takamimusubi, and turned to a lit-
tle-known deity worshipped since ancient times by fishermen. Happily, this
was to the east of Nara Basin—the direction of the rising sun—and there was a
spot there where fishermen worshipped Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. The
Nihon Shoki’s version of what happened goes like this: Amaterasu was first wor-
shipped in the royal palace, but in the reign of Sujin her sacred mirror (her shin-
tai) was enshrined in a humble village. In the next generation a more suitable
place of worship was sought, so an imperial princess was sent around the coun-
try and finally reached Ise. The Sun Goddess said she wished to be worshiped
here, and so the Grand Shrine of Ise was built. The structure, which was built
for her, probably in the sixth century (though said to be the first century in the
Nihon Shoki), was anomalous at the time, for structures were not part of kami
worship until Buddhism arrived with its own distinctive architecture. What
kind of building would be appropriate for a kami? They settled on something
that looked like a Yayoi grain storehouse, a simple one-room raised structure of
unpainted cypress, built among tall evergreens near the Isuzu River on a dou-
ble compound. Every 20 years a new shrine is built on the adjacent empty com-
pound and the old one is destroyed. The last rebuilding was in 2013 (see the
photos on the following page).
The myth of Amaterasu sanctions rites of succession that have been fol-
lowed right down to the death of Emperor Hirohito, the Showa Emperor, on
January 7, 1989, and the installation rites of Emperor Akihito in 1990. Over
1,500 years have elapsed since these rituals were initiated. At several critical