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| A view of Kudaka Island (the Island of the gods) from Seifa-Utaki (Okinawa's most sacred site) |
Okinawa prefecture in southern Japan consists of the Ryukyu archipelago, including the largest island, Okinawa. The Indigenous language and culture differs from the Yamato (standard Japanese). Ryukyu was an independent kingdom until conquest by the Japanese Satsuma clan early in the seventeenth century, Okinawa was influenced by both China and Japan, and it often served as a bridge between the two cultures. Okinawan culture and religion have been maintained as distinct entities in many ways to this century. The Ryukyu Islands stretch for four hundred miles between the southern tip of Kyushu and the northern coast of Taiwan.
Okinawa is about seventy miles long, situated more or less in the middle of the island chain. The population currently numbers about 1.3 million, excluding American troops. The Ryukyuan economy was based on subsistence farming and fishing. Perhaps under the influence of Chinese envoys, the small independent polities that existed in the islands were amalgamated by King Sho Hashi in 1429 into a single kingdom. One of his successors, Sho Shin (1477-1526), consolidated these conquests and established a Confucian-based government, forbidding the carrying of arms and institutionalizing the separation between nobility and commoners.
In the late sixteenth century, the growing power of the southern Japanese domain of Satsuma brought the Okinawan kingdom more and more into Japan's orbit than China's, and the kingdom became a part of the Satsuma domain in the seventeenth century. In contrast to the Japanese on the main islands, Ryukyuans have been recorded by almost all researchers as being singularly uninterested in mythology.
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| Satsuma Samurai |
Mythological figures are amorphous and undefined, and discussions of legends and mythology seem to have little or no interest for the average Okinawan. In many cases what has been touted as a Ryukyuan myth was a reworking by a mainland Japanese scholar in search of sonic affinity between Okinawa and Japan, usually to justify Japan's ascendancy.
Such myths that do exist and are retold are generally origin myths, and even those are often abbreviated and localized. The Ryukyuans are religious in the sense that most individuals recognize the importance of participating in rituals and in carrying out ritual requirements. But their religion is not focused on, nor dependent on, clear enunciation of the gods they refer to.
The focus is rather upon the proper conduct of rituals, which are deeply embedded in Ryukyuan life and interpersonal behavior. Unusually too, Ryukyuan religion is one of the few female-centered religions in the world: The majority of ritual specialists (priests and mediums), and all the senior ones, are female. Whether this is the relict of an earlier matriarchal type of religion or a peculiarity of Ryukyuan culture is impossible to say. The main Okinawan mythological figures are the kang. These are conceived of as very similar to humankind, if much more powerful. Where portrayed, they are seen as figures dressed in Chinese robes and hats: the clothes assumed by the nobility of Okinawa.
The kang are generally neutral so long as the rituals are carried out and people behave "properly" in their relations with others and with the sacred groves and caves the kang inhabit (or rather, through which they travel to the mundane world). The kang are powerful and possess abilities that people do not have. They will interfere in human lives if the rituals are not carried out. Even so, they can he manipulated, even cheated, by human actions and deceit. In the vague mythology that is expressed, there are a number of identifiable categories. The senior group are the zing no kang (heavenly kang). Like the Japanese kami, these are vaguely felt to be superior. Among them are uniang sea kang), milli no kang 'water kang), and aida-kang (solar kang). Again, like the Japanese system, there are a plethora of local kang: well kang, house kang, and paddy kang. There are also occupational kang: fishermen, net-makers, and boat builder kang.
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| Noro |
The mythological timeline, vague as it is, starts with the Age of Heaven. During that age, the heavenly kang (or, in some versions, Nirai Kang, the heavenly creator deity) instructed a brother and sister kang, Shinerikyu and Amaikyu, to create the land and the people on it.
The two of them descended from heaven and created the mythical paradise of Kudaka Island out of the waters. Another version of the same myths (in the Chuzan Seikan) recounts that the two descended with building materials, stones, earth, trees, and plants with which they held back the waves and formed the archipelago's islands. They then gave birth, without sexual intercourse, to three offspring the first ruler (a son), the first priestess, and the first farmer (again, a son).
After several generations a descendant of these first people was born. Tenteishi, as he was named, divided humankind into proper classes: kings, nobles, farmers, high priestesses, and village priestesses. Each of his five children assumed one of these positions. The people were then many, and they crossed the sea, landing at Sefa Utaki the sacred grove of Seefa) on the south shore of Okinawa island. Sefa Utaki is still the main pilgrimage site in Okinawa. Every village or community normally has an utaki where the local priestess communes with the kang.
The world was ordered so that temporal power in Ryukyuan communities is wielded by men, while the spiritual power that supports them is wielded by their sisters. The same is true in most families. With the establishment of the unified Okinawan kingdom in the early fifteenth century (the kingdom also controlled, with greater or lesser effect, the outlying islands), the female-male system was formalized, and village noro (priestesses) were trained and appointed by the central government.
The generalized creation story recorded in the main island of Okinawa is repeated on other Ryukyuan islands, with local, rather than "national," referents. Ouwehand recorded a similar story on the island of Hateruma, which makes no reference to Okinawa. And the foundation myth of sister-brother founder deities can also be found further south, in Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as further north, echoed in the Japanese foundation myth.
For the Ryukyuans there are two distinct realms: The first, of humans that is, the mundane world), occupies most people's interest. The other realm, of the kang, is poorly identified, diffuse, and not clearly conceptualized. The kang inhabit that realm, but they are able to manifest themselves in the mundane world. The portals between the two worlds, at least insofar as humans are concerned, are the sacred groves (uaki), springs, and caves through which the other realm may be accessed. Above all, however, it is the hearth through which information on the doings of individuals and families reaches the kang.
Today's post is from the book: 'Handbook of Japanese Mythology' by Michael Ashkenazi.
If you wish to learn more about Japanese Mythology I suggest giving this book a look.
Comment below to share any thoughts or opinions you might have. J
Thanks for reading.
Derm
ϾDerm
My grandmother was a Ryukyuan slave to a Noro. He mother sold her during a period of starvation characteristic of a people who expend vital social resources worshiping the bones of the dead. During Operation Iceberg, her Noro took her to a burial cave where she later died. The islands were ruled by oppression and despair.
ReplyDeleteThis was a highly oppressive slaver society producing little beyond their own needs. That mother's enslaved daughters of the same race, made it no less oppressive.
.... cont
ReplyDeleteTherefore I remain eternally grateful that many of these Noro slavers were killed resisting the allies. Later, she married an Ally soldier but her experience seemed to have left her plagued with many demons.