312 Part IV: East Asian Civilization
nent or irreversible. At the end of the mourning period the body received its
second and final burial. This practice is also alluded to in the Izanami story
when Izanagi tries to retrieve her horribly decaying body; she finally closes her-
self in the other world by rolling a stone into the entrance; Izanagi then goes to
a stream to ritually purify himself. While the dead emperor lay waiting for the
final burial the court was often filled with intrigue as various claimants to the
throne attempted to advance themselves. One way, apparently, was to push
one’s way into the mogari no miya in an effort to take possession of one of the
imperial concubines.
2.The sokui no rei. In January 1990 the Japanese government announced
that installation rites for the new emperor would be the traditional ones;
sokui no rei would be on November 12, 1990, and daijosai would be the
night of November 22–23, 1990. Observers were taken by surprise, since
the daijosai is so clearly Shinto and certainly seems to assert the
emperor’s kinship with Amaterasu. This was the first opportunity to
perform this rite by a new emperor since Hirohito’s renunciation of
divinity and the new constitution of 1947 (Crump 1991).
The sokui no rei requires an imperial procession from Tokyo to Kyoto, the
ancient capital, taking along the bronze mirror of the Sun Goddess in its porta-
ble shrine; that is, the Sun Goddess is taken to Kyoto. In Kyoto, the emperor is
seated in a temporary hall along with the portable shrine of Amaterasu repre-
sented by her bronze mirror. Then the sacred sword and jewel are brought in,
thus reuniting the three sacred objects with the person of the new emperor for
the first and only time in each reign. He then worships the Sun Goddess.
In the afternoon of the same day there is a ceremony copied almost whole-
sale from China in a hall called shishen. In China, the shishen were the pole-star
and the stars surrounding it, symbolizing the authority of the emperor. The
emperor enters from the north and ascends the throne, facing south to receive
congratulations from the court, the government, and the people, who give three
shouts of “Banzai!” Simultaneously all over the nation people shout “banzai!”
3.The ceremony that really counts is the daijosai. In the Nihon Shoki records
of reign after reign, the new emperor had to have everything in his con-
trol by the autumn rice harvest festival, the niiname matsuri, on Novem-
ber 23, for the emperor played a crucial role in it. The new emperor’s
first participation ended the liminal period of transition with his
assumption of spiritual responsibility for rice production. The logic of
the ceremony is that Amaterasu, who sent her grandson with rice for the
people of Japan, continues to nurture rice growth and harvesting
through her embodiment in her imperial descendants. Her importance
to rice cultivation continues as the Sun Goddess who makes the crops
grow; above all she must not become angry again and reenter the cave,
which would destroy crops and bring destruction and death to the peo-
ple of Japan.