Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Beyond a white beach so dazzlingly long it made one blink, a sea unreachable by sight swayed.
The sky stretched overhead where azure wave-edges had naturally risen and spread.
When one turned to look, it continued all the way to where mountain lines demarcating the horizon stood blocking.
What met the eyes when looking around and above was only this.
The sun blazed as fiercely as the wind howled across this lonely expanse of sky and earth.
What stirred such listless gazes was - without exaggeration - the form of a dugout canoe that might be mistaken for a bird, abruptly emerging between waves and sky when least expected.
From afar, house roofs resembling shore rocks sat clustered here and there like forgotten things.
In the Ryukyu Islands, no matter how far one traveled, such islands abounded.

The ancestors who form the main current of our blood were thought to have likely lived through such island existences. Therefore, even after life in this land began, up until the time of the Manyō people, they did not lament life’s emptiness. “Monotony…” “Cyclicality…” That was what comprised the entirety—the life of our ancestors. They clung unwaveringly to the belief that this was all a human life entailed. Moreover, in light of such convictions, there lay profound meaning in how our ancestors’ hamlet life—stretching back to an era so long as to defy reckoning, predating even the state itself—had persisted. When they realized this existence would repeat—last year, this year, next year, likely until their dying day—they could not have endured it.

In those remote islands where even postal ships came but once a month, where tree spirits had never once mimicked a policeman’s whistle, and where shrine maidens and village shamans still wielded the authority of female rulers—there lingered remnants of such antiquity.
Even those rare youths who returned pale-faced to their homeland of waves, sky, and sandy shores—having tasted life’s futility in Naha’s capital—would eventually cast aside such indulgences as complaints while tossing restlessly in sleep.
Our ancestors’ village life stood precisely thus.
The villages knew no history.
People who dwelled not on the past could harbor no expectations for next year or beyond.
In our forebears’ hamlets, if any span invited contemplation beforehand, it was merely the year between spring’s first labors and autumn’s final harvest.
The term “koso,” signifying “last year and prior,” had branched in later times from “kiso,” denoting “yesterday and before.”
Though rationalists later decreed “ototoshi” as “the year before last” through kana orthography, this belied its true nature.
For “oto” within “ototoshi” carries “ochi”—the word for realms beyond intervening spaces.
Thus “kanen” became its name: that year lying across from last year.
Only when faint glimmers of historical awareness began surfacing in hamlet life did this notion—that identical conditions recur at fixed intervals—emerge with startling clarity.
That grandfather and child were deemed one being, that father and grandson’s lives mirrored each other—this stood as irrefutable truth.
Perhaps it was then that calendrical concepts first ripened thus.

They had set last year and this year in opposition.
It might be said that these two years, progressing under differing conditions, had existed as ones that would perpetually alternate.
If one follows this calendar model, this year and the year before last’s koso year were repetitions of the year before last (Man'yō).
Even in ancient times when they had yet to fully establish terms for “next year” or “the year after next,” I believe the idea gradually emerged that this year’s repetition would become the year after next, and next year would see a recurrence of last year’s conditions.

Moreover, even within a single year, they came to incorporate two types of years.
I believe this was a post-state way of thinking, but a custom emerged of dividing the year into two parts.
This seems to have been encouraged by the belief traditions of naturalized foreigners and resident Han Chinese people.
In other words, it was the concept of dividing the year into two parts, using the time of Chūgen as the boundary.
First, I want you to note how the “Grand Purification Ritual” came to be held on the last days of June and December.
The return to the village of ancestral spirits enshrined in Tokoyo—the Eternal World beyond the distant sea—was the sign of spring renewing the year.

Later, they syncretized Buddhist teachings, and it came to center around the July Obon festival.
However, even prior to that, the autumn spirit-welcoming had already been conceived in contrast to the original spring spirit festival.
When people came to forget the visitation of the Tokoyo deity, the spring-coming spirits were assimilated into cyclical deities of Japanese Onmyōdō—referred to as Toshigami or Tokudoshi-sama.
And thus, the crucial spirit festival became formalized in autumn.
They adopted the form of Buddhist rituals that required having the priest read the shelf sutras to achieve completion.

The custom of the double New Year—where people set up kadomatsu pine decorations and pounded rice cakes again in autumn to remedy an unprosperous age—persisted even into recent times, a manifestation of human suffering that cannot be laughed away. However, this custom, too, has ancient origins. Because the this-year-type calendar was bad, they say they will go with the koso-type calendar.

But the calendar immediately preceding it was only this year.
I wish to discuss how the commemoration of hamlet life—which existed beyond such a year, without retrospect or anticipation—persisted in what form into the state era and even further into modern times.

II

Kashima’s proclamations no longer walked through spring prophecies, and the woodblocks of the Mishima calendar had become likely candidates for museum pieces in this age.
The repetitive incantations of ancient almanacs—even those like the Jingū Shichō’s Ōnusa Calendar now half-forgotten—may yet invert the monotonous cycles of a desolate spring, like those earthquake-haunted years, into auspicious tidings from the Eternal World’s first message.

Even without crossing to those remote oceanic islands, the same “tedium” permeated Okinawa Main Island itself.
Had it been the zenith of the Shuri Dynasty’s power, my dear friend from the island—who by now would likely have been deified by its people under some divine appellation like Higenaga Kyōfū Taishu while still living—found himself shunned by his island faction and came to Tokyo.
For such ungrateful souls, I persist in writing even now, unrepentant.
My earlier-published *Kotōku no Ryūkyū* (“The Suffering of Remote Islands: Ryukyu”) stands as a work that—like one man exhaling centuries’ worth of sighs from islanders who drifted through millennia without purpose—leaves even us victors of the mainland steeped in loneliness.
In Shimajiri and Nakagami, where Shuri Court’s influence ran deep, matters still fared better.
But in Kunigami District at the island’s northern reaches—once the monarch’s bastion—the inherited “cyclicality” yet prevailed, its people now collectively seeking outlets.
Walking through those coastal villages chilled me to the bone.
It was akin to meeting a pitiful old man whose weary eyes seemed incarnations of insular suffering—gloomy and wretched beyond measure.

In the mountains of Kunigami District—known as Yanbaru for its many peaks—red cherry blossoms apparently bloom at New Year by the modern calendar.

I set foot in Kunigami twice, but it was always during the height of summer even in Tokyo.
Once I thought of wanting to see scarlet cherry blossoms poignantly fragrant amidst tropical broad-leaved trees, but such an opportunity never arose.
Was that cherry tree something someone brought back from a journey to Japan as a keepsake?
Was it originally indigenous to the island?
This may already be known to those scholars.

Kano Morohira’s *Abalone Jewel Collection* contains Yamato poems composed by island nobles.
The materials were likely supplied by those such as the Hata clan of Satsuma.
From that time onward, autobiographies of island nobles—modeled after *The Tales of Ise*—had already emerged.
Few had laid hands on Genji, Kokin, or Man'yō.
The hiragana in inscriptions recounting national antiquities and family lineages were precise yet rigid in the *Oie-ryū* style, while the islanders’ Yamato writings and poems were so laden with formulaic repetition that they seemed crystallized monotony.
In awakening to the island’s isolation hardships, methods of the Shimazu clan and others became major causes.
When one speaks of Yamato people, they mean Satsuma people.
Even imagined as mere provincials, something must still have tugged at hearts.

In the ancient language of the Omoro Sōshi as well as in the living court language of Shuri, old Yamato words were intermingled everywhere.
In the ancient words passed down by the shrine maidens of the Shuri Court were told traces of the noble scion from the Yamashiro capital who had crossed over to the island.
The islands, for their part, had many gods whose names evoked the divine Heike nobles said to have crossed the distant sea—deities of Namori.
Even before Yumiharizuki, it could be inferred that there had been movement in the idea of portraying the father of King Shunten as a noble prince who came from this Yamashiro capital.
Even if they had forgotten being a people who had branched from a single ancient stream, there remained such a profound awareness of lineage that they had to consider these new connections.
Admittedly, this must have also arisen from the gloomy exaggerated sense of importance born of remote island hardships.
The problem lay in something more fundamental than that.

Amidst the island’s groves, cherry blossoms bloomed intermingled—as if forgotten.
Such realities must have stirred in Yamato—prone to flights of fancy through songs, tales, and the Edo Tribute Missions’ maritime accounts—a strong sense of evidentiary proof among those who had inherited this bloodline.
If pressed, the ephemeral flower’s form—illogical as it was—must have exerted an empirical force upon their emotions.
Though no shadows of *masira* sung in poetry could be seen, deer pining for mates were indeed present.
From one of the western sea’s remote islands came plaintive cries.
The islands too held elegant utamakura.
How profoundly such matters clashed!
The “mono no aware” that Yamato people proudly recorded was known even to the islanders.
The kinship welling from these things could be faintly grasped even by us—those whom islanders call “people from other prefectures.”

Lately another pride had grown among the islanders.
The sweetfish is a fish that does not live outside Japan’s territory.
Karafuto—which has rivers in its southern part where this fish ascends—therefore became Japanese territory.
Such rumors spread when it turned out that even Okinawa had a single river where sweetfish lived.
This was undeniably evidence they were Yamato people by fate—or rather by bloodline.
As such thoughts arose，the dimmed feelings from when they had weighed China and Satsuma on both scales appeared gradually dispelled.

The place referred to as where the sweetfish are caught is the waterside of Genka Village, a treacherous point along the Kunigami Kaidō. In the folk songs of Ryukyu—where singing of village maidens' forms and passions constitutes life itself—there were many permeated with the aimless frustration of the village youth.

III

Even if brought to Tokyo, Mr. Sueyoshi Yasuyasu—the Ryukyu scholar who should never have been caught off guard—was a vast living repository of the island’s ancient traditions.
And before we could draw out much of that knowledge, the Great Lord God of the Pure Land Beyond had summoned him from Naha’s inlet.

Genka’s rushing river—water?
Hot water?
The tide?

Genka Maiden’s Honorable Place of Origin (Genka-bushi)

These doubts regarding the Genka-bushi became, for me, a memorial to this scholar.

A few years prior, having returned from Miyako Island, I received a protest imbued with goodwill from Mr. Nikorai Nefusukii, who was then at Osaka Foreign Language School.
My old work, the *Man'yōshū Dictionary*, is now such a shameful book that even being mentioned by others makes me cringe.
In it, I had written an interpretation related to the *Man'yōshū* term "*ochimizu*" (Rejuvenating Water).
In the *Man'yōshū*, there appears the phrase "the Rejuvenating Water held by Tsukuyomi."
Presuming this Tsukuyomi deity was likely the moon god of Yamashiro Tsuzuki District—one enshrined by naturalized Han Chinese—I had posited the hypothesis that the concept of Rejuvenating Water expanded from the faith these immigrants brought.
Given this was an era when Taoist immortal theories flourished and many devoted themselves to ascetic practices, I wrote that this likely represented a variation of the Fountain of Youth.
However, Mr. Nefusukii stated as follows.

In the Miyako dialect, *shijiyun*—or in Japanese terms, *shideru*—has “to rejuvenate” as its correct usage example.
The water drawn on the morning of Qingming Festival—which marks the true beginning of spring in the Okinawa Islands—was regarded as sacred.
In some regions it was called “Setsu no Wakamizu,” while in other places it was referred to as “Setsu no Shijisui.”
Needless to say, this was Japan’s New Year’s Wakamizu.
As long as such beliefs persisted, the Chinese origin theory remained precarious.
This foreigner—who knew even the recesses of Japanese sensibilities—was all too aware of my tendency to insist every folk tradition stemmed from indigenous beliefs.
He understood how rarely mocking careless foreign-origin theories could pierce through stubborn nationalists’ convictions.
With an ironic smile directed at me,
he proved himself quite the mischievous critic.
Though years had passed since then—enough time for my theories to take root—
his earnest rigor remained exemplary.

The moon shone pure white that night, beyond the stone wall of what was said to have been a former royal palace, where the faintly trailing songs of young men alternated through the air.
Mr. Sueyoshi and I had gone as guests to Mr. Kawahira Chōrei’s home in Shuri.
“Since shijiyun refers to egg-hatching,” [Kawahira continued,] “your inquiry about ‘Setsu no Wakamizu’—”
“—might concern a different shijiyun from that one.”
I had long doubted the “O-sujidokoro” mentioned in Genka-bushi—could it not simply mean washing?
Bathing and washing hands were considered equivalent acts; even in Shuri this term had been used formerly.
When these words were spoken,

“Mr. Sueyoshi.”
“I heard this before as well.”
“When I guided you to Nakagusuku Palace—the current Shuri residence of the Sho family where the women of the former royal lineage still reside—I drew water from the hand basin and said, ‘Please perform the ritual purification (*mishōre* = *masu*).’”

In this way, Mr. Kawahira also interjected.
I felt, regrettably, that Mr. Nefusukii’s theory was gradually becoming more certain.

“Gentlemen.”
“My thinking is as follows.”
“From our earlier discussion, it has become clear that *shijiyun* carries two meanings.”
“The meaning of hatching and the meaning related to ablution.”
“This derives from a single original meaning and must still return to what we have been discussing from earlier—the matter of ‘rejuvenation.’”
“It was a phrase spoken when presenting Young Water to the king during the Qingming Festival, meaning ‘May you rejuvenate.’”
“That, as a set phrase when presenting water, was also recited during the usual morning ablutions.”
“Over time, it came to be interpreted with a lighter meaning akin to ‘May you rejuvenate playfully,’ and even among those beyond the king, it began to be uttered with solemnity—eventually being regarded as an old-fashioned expression for ‘Wash your face and hands.’”
“The Genka-bushi songs you taught me also emerged from the Qingming Festival customs of beach and river pilgrimages, and among the crowds of villagers purifying themselves with the festival water, young women too joined in.”
“That must be the sentiment of young people eager to catch a glimpse of it.”
“On days of festivals other than Qingming Festival as well, they may have gone on river pilgrimages or taken baths.”
“In any case, it was still a ritual bathing called ‘may you rejuvenate lightly’ (in a lighter sense than ‘rejuvenation’), not merely ‘washing’.”
“It would not be ‘to purify,’ would it?”

After such discussions and the like, I returned to my lodgings in Naha.

A few days later, I set out toward the Sakishima Islands.

Even in Miyako Island, it appeared to pertain to hatching. In Yonaguni of Yaeyama, *suderu* was used not only for hatching but also for the shedding of snakes’ and crabs’ skins. There were many erudite individuals on this island. Venerable Iwasaki Takuji of the meteorological observatory—naturally—along with Mr. Kishaba Eijun and others, as if by prior agreement, presented evidentiary ballads and expounded their views. In phrases like those found in “Yakujama-bushi”—“*mareru* (to be born) *kai*, *suderu* (to hatch) *kai*”—the *suderu* served as a counterpart to *mareru*, and thus likewise signified “the significance of being born.” Even the hatching denoted by *shijiyun* in fact derived from this concept of birth. I heard this assertion from four or five individuals.

Upon examining the entry for “hatching” in *Saibō Nantō Gikō* (“Collected Lexicon of Southern Islands”) by Mr. Miyara Tōsō—the first literature graduate from these islands, who had resolved to devote his life to researching and documenting Ryukyu dialects—it became clear that across the Miyako Islands, Okinawa Islands, and Sakishima Archipelago, those islands bearing what might be called a quintessentially Ryukyuan character generally used terms like *shijiyun*, *shijirun*, and *sudeyun* in closely related forms.
This was, in effect, Okinawa’s standard language.
What Mr. Miyara’s painstaking efforts had determined was that *shijiyun* did not appear to signify mere “birth.”
This time, when Mr. Miyara journeyed through the islands, I resolved to ask him to gather dialect terms corresponding to concepts like “rejuvenation,” “ritual bathing,” and “purification.”

During the Qingming Festival, if a dead snake fell into the *shiji* water, it revived and crawled away.
This—explaining that this was how they first came to know the power of *shiji* water—appears to be the origin story of Wakamizu throughout the Sakishima region.
This term, it appears that Mr. Nefusukii had also conducted research in Miyako and the remote islands prior to this.
Certain kinds of animals have a method of birth called *suderu*.
Like snakes and birds, from within things that had maintained a death-like stillness, a vigorous new life activity began once more.
When observed after being born, there was an egg and a shell.
Therefore, this manner of birth—distinguished from “being born” from the mother’s womb—was referred to as *suderu* in the Ryukyuan language.
The amiable devotees, since they referred to it as both *shiji* water and *Wakamizu*, conceived that *suderu* and *shijiyun* carried the meaning of rejuvenation.
I explained that such illustrative examples also existed on the main island.

To explain it in that way was indeed an expedient path and, up to a certain point, the same thing—but there had been a considerable leap in logic.
*Suderu* was a birth that did not involve a mother’s womb.
It might also be called a birth—or revival—from death.
Or perhaps an emergence from some manner of vessel.
*Shiji* water had no true connection to births independent of a womb; this was precisely why he had noted how its conflation with explanations for Wakamizu’s origins during Qingming Festival arose from such confusion.
Humans—who do not *suderu*—seek through this ritual to inherit its power.

Four

Why did they wish to suderu? Why had there been humans possessing this ability—as I will now describe—and why was it limited solely to rulers and heroes among humankind? This explanation not only addressed the origin of Young Water but also elucidated ancient Japanese and Ryukyuan spirit worship; moreover, it revealed a unifying principle underlying calendar systems, the essential spirit of ritual invocations, and the very foundations of Japanese thought.

The term suderu inherently presupposed a period of dormancy. In plants, after winter's withering death came spring's budding branches, blooming flowers—all growing thicker, larger, and more abundant than the previous year. This cyclical demise existed for greater life still to come. From spring until winter's arrival, field and mountain vegetation completed its lifespan. Then came another existence spanning from the returning spring of the following year until winter's embrace. The preceding year and subsequent year bore no relation to each other. Winter's mortal stillness could thus be called a preparatory phase for entering such an utterly distinct realm.

However, while this way of thinking was strongly active among ancestors from the north, for the southern lineage that passed down Young Water, even if the conclusion was the same, it did not become the direct cause. If we look at examples from animals, this fact becomes even more clearly understood. If they had come through the tropics, then their observation of the transitions in animals' lives should have been even more thorough. Whether snakes or birds, they grow too large to remain within their original shells, breaking through their skin or eggshells to emerge. From our perspective, the period until they shed their skin is a kind of dormancy, and the egg is birth. The common ancestors of Japan and Ryukyu did not think so. They regarded life after shedding skin and breaking through eggs as foundational. Therefore, those unknown to humans would seclude themselves to prepare to obtain a reincarnated form. Particularly from their ability to fly freely through the sky, they inferred the extraordinariness of their previous form. In the end, eggs and shells were sanctuaries for reincarnation into the other world and obtaining a transformed form distinct from one's previous existence. Snakes shed their skin multiple times even after emerging from their eggs. Herein lies the reason crawling insects were revered.

In the Southern Islands, butterflies were often regarded in the same manner as birds.
Those serving as messengers to gods or demons were birds and butterflies.
In our country too, butterflies were denoted by the name *chōtori* (literally "butterfly-birds").
Compared to snakes, the metamorphosis of butterflies proved more dramatic in tropical regions.
When perceived as butterflies, they would retreat into eggs only to reemerge as caterpillars.
When these creatures withdrew into their second egg-like cocoons and emerged anew, they did so with startling beauty, acquiring the power of unfettered flight.
Thus did eggs, shells, and cocoons come to be revered as sacred.

In Korea, bird eggs had come to be regarded as significant.
There were tales of monarchs and heroes who emerged from eggs.
There were also cases where, based on the surnames of ancient monarchs, they were understood to have emerged not from eggs but from gourds.
In Japan, as in Korea, they were said to enter shells or other vessels and come from the other world.
Though it was a distinction between the other world and other living creatures, it was an era when living beings were seen as inhabiting their respective realms and occasionally visiting others’ dwellings.
Therefore, after all, it came to the same thing.

Hata no Kawakatsu’s jar, Momotaro’s peach, Urihimeko’s gourd—all of these were said to have drifted ashore through water.
But this included even matters concerning gods arriving from Tokoyo.
They would enter gourds, tub-shaped boats, lidless containers, and such vessels, their narratives diverging into tales of gods drifting away.
Therefore, even without journeying there, Princess Hakuya secluded herself within bamboo nodes to receive life from the other world.
This seclusion—the memory of existence while receiving an altered form—became human retreat and ritual purification (*komori・imi*).
Immersing oneself in ritual purification (*imi*) and seclusion (*komori*) came to be regarded as the path for receiving a body from others.
Those requiring particular solemnity had to be wrapped in burial quilts and remain secluded for prolonged periods.

The time spent within these shells and skins was death, and what was gained through death was an external force.
When this power entered the corpse within the shell, it took on the mode of birth called *suderu* and emerged.
To be precise, while the boundary lay in whether the external power entered the body or not, one might first take the shell as the demarcation between previous and subsequent lives.
Therefore, it gained a distinct life.
When one came to consider it as temporally continuous, it was thought of as revival.
*Suderu* is “to rejuvenate.”
Before approaching the meaning [of “suderu”], there existed the meaning of “revival,” and furthermore, as its original sense, there were terms that emerged by receiving external power.

Ōkuninushi, in terms of form, could be seen as having revived from death up to seven times.
In the Land of Yomi, they were spared from death through a lover’s bestowed wisdom.
This was likely a metamorphosis brought about by acquiring external power from death.
Wisdom too served as a means of bestowing such external power.

The lexical precursor to “revival” (*yomigaeri*) lies in *suderu*’s primary meaning, with Japan’s “*wotsu*” corresponding to this.
In the sense of “coming from afar,” *ochi* appears as a verbalization—perhaps *wotsu* denoted self-action while *oku* (“summon”) applied when others acted.
Thus one could trace back to the root *wo*. An example where *ochi* seemingly represented life’s foundation was *ochinashi*, a term for those who had lost their vital spirit (*kimon*).
Professor Yanagita Kunio proposed that *mana* as an external soul was expressed through the archaic term *iwa* (“divine authority”), likely a sound interpretation.
Terms like *itsu*, *miitsu*, and *itsu no* stemmed from language sensing the might inherent in the Emperor’s and gods’ deeds and will.

The etymology of *chihayaburu* was “ichihayaburu,” but it came to signify the awe-inspiring power of the Imperial Majesty. Since this was also referred to as *uchihayaburu*, the relationship between the kana usages of *ochi to itsu* and *ichi* became clear. Consequently, even the act of gods descending came to be verbalized as *itsu* and nominalized into forms such as *itsukashi* or *ichiniwa*. In later periods, *itsu* came to be referred to as *mitama no fuyu* and such, while in ancient times it had likely been called *ochi*. Terms like *otoko* and *otome*—though characters such as “strong man,” “unmarried woman,” and “virgin” were assigned to them from antiquity—likely initially referred to those who had received coming-of-age rites qualifying them to become divine beings (*kamihito*) of the village.

The role called *uzume* oversaw soul pacification, and at funerals, *uzume* would appear. Those of highest rank were named Uzume no Mikoto—not “mortar priestess.” Though “wozo” evokes dread, I consider it merely a kana variation of “utsume” or “wotsume.” Their duty was to make souls “ochifuraseru” [drift away]. From this notion of emergence came *utsuru* [transfer] and *utsushi* [manifestation], terms grounding abstract concepts like *utsutsu* [reality]—akin to how *masa/masashi* once conveyed divine will’s expression. For “man” and “woman,” there existed celestial paragons (*ama no masahito*). Transferring (*utsuru*) and manifesting (*utsusu*) denoted divine possession; “clan” (*uchi*) arose from lineages inheriting foreign deities, while *tsugi* [succession] marked their order. As for Mononobe’s Yasoji River’s “clans”—might they signify not multiplicity but nested groups within one *uchi*?

The totality of a bloodline was consistently called *suji* (lineage), and from this meaning, it became differentiated into uses such as lines, points, and places. In Okinawa as well, *sude* carried the meaning of “completely.” Sutsu, utsu, and utsuru all derived from the meaning of “woharu” (to cast away), having come to signify “to throw out.” *Sudaku* likely referred to the appearance and gathering of spirits.

When viewed in this light, there appeared to have existed a *sutsu* in contrast to *wotsu* and *itsu*. The Sutahe of Okitsu Sutabe was also likely meant to signify a spirit bed. The Ryukyu archaic term *suji*, corresponding to *wotsu* and *itsu*, had taken various forms such as *sechi* and *shichi*. It seemed ancestors and the like were also referred to as *suji*. Upon closer inspection, there lay the essence of god. Among the three deities of Kikoe-ōgimi Palace—namely Osuji no Omae, Kin no Miosuji no Omae, and Ofuro no Omae—Kin no Miosuji alone was a spirit that had arrived alongside rice and was later enshrined as a grain deity. Osuji no Omae was understood as an ancestral deity but remained a foreign spirit that served as the guardian deity of successive dynasties.

Five

I had interpreted the etymology of the Ryukyu archaic term *sujā*—meaning “human”—as deriving from “one who is reborn (*suderu mono*)” or “one who is born (*umareru mono*; where *a* is a nominal suffix). However, I came to realize there had been a misunderstanding at the very foundation of this interpretation. One who undergoes *suderu*—rebirth—is a being endowed with the capacity to receive an external soul and manifest it. Yet all instances of this term’s usage proved exceptional. These were producers imbued with divine intent—the elect. It is likely the term signified divine beings (*kamihito*), akin to the Japanese *hito* and *masa hito*. Since the terms found in ancient priestess texts did not extend to those outside the divine class, even within these same archaic records, *sujā* came to be interpreted as denoting ordinary people and thus entered common parlance—or so I concluded. The king and nobles’ families, being divine beings themselves, were *sujā*. More precisely, it signified “*sujiri* people” rather than “*suji* people.” As power arose from the guardianship of lineage (*suji*), in eras that did not speak of *suji*, they manifested the soul through *mamori*—protection. They came to regard the external soul as something transcending moral binaries of good and evil.

The ideology manifest in *sujā*, when viewed through the lens of Japanese faith, might be understood as “revived beings,” yet its foundations differed entirely. A lineage was seen as a single personality persisting since ancestral times—one that would always reemerge after periods of rest. Those who served the gods in antiquity and those serving now were considered to be the same person. Though human, these individuals became revered as divine beings (*kamihito*) through possession by a deity’s spirit, which transformed their personhood and granted them spiritual power. This conception gradually evolved over time. Once designated by the deity, they became impersonal entities reborn after a phase of quiescence; extending this logic, even the stillness between generations—the death of predecessors—meant that successors inheriting the role were none other than *suderu* (rebirth) itself, perpetuating identical qualifications as if the same individual endured.

Even after passing through many generations in this way, they did not regard hereditary succession through death as a replacement but rather considered it a state of suspended animation and restrained existence for the same individual.
In fact, taboos concerning death originated from this principle; in ancient faith, death was not regarded as defilement.
Death was not death but a period of stillness for life.
Such was the tradition of the Izumo Kokuzō family.
This differed significantly from purification-imposed taboos elsewhere that sought eligibility to face deities.
Depending on familial and regional customs, during this period of *suderu*, successors would observe taboos.
This resulted in two overlapping cessations.
Such was the case for the Imperial Household.
Therefore, from divine perspective, all members of a lineage held equal status.
From the era of Amaterasu—the Sun Goddess and ancestral deity—and Hirume onward, Japan’s Emperor had always been Ninigi no Mikoto’s blood equal while religiously remaining Solar Offspring akin to Amenooshihomimi no Mikoto.
In Ryukyu times they called their sovereign *tedate*.
He was Solar Offspring.
Later generations perceiving solar metaphorization even termed the Sun itself *tedate*.
He was Solar Offspring.

The original meaning of *suderu* was, so to speak, emergence. In Japanese terms, it is a word said to carry the meaning of emergence—or perhaps it is *izu*. A term denoting actions tied to lineage, it signified a birth not reliant on the womb. The Japanese term *aru* ("to exist/have") might not have indicated mere existence or possession but rather carried the essence of *suderu*. These encompassed meanings such as “wildness” (*ara*), “appearance” (*gen*), and “manifestation” (*ken*). When we speak of “*ara hitokami*” ("wild deities"), it refers to those who are *sujā*—divine beings—and this signifies the monarch. Local minor rulers, being wild deities (*ara hitokami*), thus qualified as shrine priests; applying this principle, they also referred to the gods they enshrined in such terms. However, in examples from ancient texts, it seems better to view that shrine priests were referred to as divine beings. In contrast to sacred offerings (*are*), there existed rituals (*ichi*) and songs (*uta*), and even when considering terminology examples such as *Iwakashi* and *Iwasaki*, they may carry the meaning of “trees where deities manifest.” Could it be that the suffix *ushi* in god names—among others—is a transformation of *uchi*? The oldest divine suffix *muchi* in Japan is likely *uchi* (Ohonamuchi, Ohohirumemuchi, Homuchiwake). The *mutsu* in terms like *Kōboku-shin Rōgi* is also a misunderstanding; it likely signified deity through *itsu* or *utsu*, or carried a meaning closer to *itsuku*. The *uzu* in terms like Uzuhiko is likely the same as *itsu*. Hiko was the Child of the Sun born to Hirume and was distinguished from the Emperor’s august Child of the Sun.

There were also instances where solar epithets were applied to divine beings and shrine maidens.
Nigihayabi, Takehi, and later epithets like Morning Sun and Shining Sun also existed.
This likely signified households subordinate to the deity, comprising groups of people and positions such as the Tone.
It indicated subordination to the deity.
The expressions kami no mi ("deity's essence") and tsuha no mi—where tsuha serves as a genitive suffix—likely all denoted spiritual essence.
The suffix nami no mi, frequently seen in female deity titles, followed this same principle.
The genitive case suffix naha no functioned identically to tsu.

Muchi became names for beasts—spirits like seals and raccoon dogs—while tuchi was used for snakes and thunder.
Rice cakes could inadvertently become spirit vessels; they might belong to the lineage of muchi, itsu, and utsu.
Sake and ritual offerings were likely divine appellations too.
The term yo probably related to itsu as well.
The yo in yoru ("to depend") and yosu ("to cease") represented virtue, longevity, and grain.
The yo of Tokoyo ("Eternal World") might derive from this concept.
Could yoru have been a derivative root form of itsu?
Though we digress slightly into byways, returning to our main path: woru ("to be") and wotsu ("to renew") likely shared an etymological root.
Viewed thusly, two or three root words first produced one primal root, which then generated two or three new derivatives.
Terms like itsu ("when"), utsu ("to strike"), sutsu ("to pass through"), izu ("to emerge"), aru ("to exist"), and masu ("to increase") all appeared cognate.
"The term woku probably originated through inverted usage from wotsu."

Six

Now, why did *wotsu* carry the meaning of repetition?
Whenever foreign spirits arrived, generational change occurred.
What had initially been perceived as a fresh start devoid of particular impressions gradually came to be regarded as a process of transition once the concept of time was incorporated.
In the term *ochikata* found in Izumo Kokuzō’s Norito—such as “On yonder ancient riverbank, on this ancient riverbank, grows the young water marsh, ever more youthful and splendid; the water of purification that is shaken and cleansed, ever more renewing and flourishing…”—one discerns faith in *ochi* spirits through these celebratory words.
By contrasting *wakayu* and *wotsuto*, he considered them synonymous terms.
*Wakayu* was the etymological origin of *wakayagu*, meaning “to become youthful.”
In antiquity, it may have signified literal rejuvenation, but regional terminology here employed it synonymously with *wotsu*.
To speak of repetition concerning an individual signified revival; it also denoted the annual renewal of the year at each New Year.
Thus, “miwochima se” came to mean rejuvenation.

The Izumo Kokuzō ritual was performed twice upon appointment, and the Nakatsukasa rite only once upon accession, but when it came to the Uji-no-kami’s New Year ceremonies, they occurred annually.
Initially, people prayed for the renewal of the Emperor’s soul, which later became a prayer for its cyclical repetition.
It was not because they were living beings that revival occurred; rather, in ancient times, both life and death were accorded the same treatment in relation to the soul.
Therefore, even the same term took on the meaning of “repetition” when applied to the living.
This came to signify rejuvenation as the era progressed.
And the source of its spiritual power lay in food.
That is, they offered the incantation’s tribute.

In the Nakatsukasa Tenjin Norito, matters concerning heavenly water and rice were expounded upon.
The spirit of rice and soul of water would enter the Emperor’s body.
This constituted renewal and came to signify rejuvenation.
When employed in eulogies, it spoke of revival.
In New Year’s congratulatory rites too, the Uji-no-kami would present *ho* offerings and offer felicitations.
The Emperor received and assimilated these foreign spirits that clans had safeguarded.
The Emperor was thereby factually positioned above the clans.

The initial oath of surrender, too, was this celebratory prayer.
However, the term *wotsu* gradually came to celebrate only health, forgetting to speak of the repetition of years.
From the faith of incorporating foreign spirits that approached meals arose the custom of the water of reliance.
It was the relationship between soul and water.
The practice of giving water to the deceased when they died also arose from this concept of spiritual power gradually shifting over time.
The revival method performed by straddling a corpse was also a waterless celebratory prayer.
It was merely a method intended for people of lower status.

The belief in drinking water consequently transformed into that of washing water.
On the day of early spring, rejuvenating water connected from Tokoyo arrived.
During the Shuri court era, people journeyed to the springs of Kunigami’s northernmost frontier to draw the rejuvenating water.
This practice then shifted to fixed wells within the village and, evolving further, became a matter of using each household’s own water.
This became Japan’s Young Water—its original meaning forgotten, reduced to mere repetition.
When the household head or a designated person drew it, they assumed a priestly role.
There was also a ritual of summoning Young Water.
It was groundwater flowing from the Land of Tokoyo.
Therefore, the waves of Tokoyo washed upon every shore, becoming the water for the seaside villages’ beach pilgrimages and river pilgrimages.

However, in Japan, when a god brought Young Water, it was done by a deity who had become a vassal for the sake of a sovereign god.
In island villages, perhaps besides seeds of the five grains, they also brought clear water that may have been set adrift in jars as they were.
In Okinawan islands, alongside grains washing ashore, they expounded upon the origins of “Ukimizo” and “Hahimizo.”
This too occurred because water from Tokoyo had emerged.
As people drank it, their fields likewise gained new vitality through it.

The one capable of rejuvenation was invariably a sovereign.
Japan too had many deities never born from maternal wombs.
While Izanagi-no-Mikoto performed purification rites at Ahagihara to achieve renewal (*suderu*), the gods themselves came into existence through the spiritual power of this rejuvenating water.
The bestowal of longevity blessings likewise originated from faith in this reviving water.
In ancient times, rulers across nations and islands all enjoyed extended lifespans.
These were spans of years modern people would deem unbelievable.

When teaching the conclusion of the Age of the Gods volume in *Jinnō Shōtōki*, young people laugh derisively. Their impertinence manifests in extending even the reigns of the Human Emperors through such traditions; one might say the rulers likely inflated them considerably. While occupied with such contrived wisdom, scholars of historical studies—having once more washed their faces and bowels with rejuvenating water—would do well to revitalize their research methods too. The Japanese people possess both cause for imagining such long-lived beings and a history thereof. Let us reflect that there existed numerous perpetually renewed ritualists and shrine maidens who persisted for centuries with identical names, personalities, and emotions, performing identical duties. They fragmented these protracted endeavors of singular entities into discrete portions, apportioning them to individual historical personages. Immediately preceding this—whether spanning a millennium or indeterminate length—there endured an unbroken epoch of successive shrine maidens, *maetsugimi*, and ritualists.

The Japanese people celebrated Young Water while having forgotten its origins, and the islanders still used rejuvenating water, retaining some memory of its lineage.
The New Year’s Young Water shared by Japan and Ryukyu was a custom that had persisted through shifting terminology since an era when ancient villagers—who knew nothing of loneliness—lived unaware and unthinking of anything beyond the span of a single year from spring to winter.
When one considered it, time and again, those born in the land of Japan had thought of—and continued to think of—it as an era in which they entrusted their lives over the long term under the name of Japanese nationals.
Our qualification was the qualification of the next world.
As for human villages, countries, or territories, each time they received these celebratory prayers and repeatedly incorporated their foreign spirits, the nation gradually grew robust.
Though we spoke of a long tradition, in reality, it was the result of having repeatedly accumulated, as a whole, a lifetime of dreams like sea villagers.
The act of drinking rejuvenating water had been limited to chosen individuals.
Despite this, people all attempted to emulate it.
They had striven to draw at least a handful of Tokoyo’s water from their own wells.
And so, in homes and villages, there were indeed such people in abundance.
It was an emulation of the rejuvenated ones.
I will take this opportunity to add a discussion about “congratulatory matters.”

Seven

Though crude, it was referred to as *saba*.
Inadvertently, even in this discussion, there was a part where I had read *saba*.
“Saba” refers to ritual birth rice, not the mackerel fish.
They would cut off the top of the ritual rice offered on the *kamidana* and scatter it on bare ground or such places.
Since this constituted the “head,” it became synonymous with “cutting off the head”—by adding *saba-hane*, they performed their accounting.
The term *saba* appeared to have existed since ancient times; it seemed they came to call it thus through food offerings made to venerated ones.

At the beginning of spring and during the seven days after before Obon—a precursor to the later servants’ leave—they went out to perform the *saba* reading.
Those who lived apart from their parents would make a special trip to pay respects—to where their parents resided, to the villages of their parents-in-law, and particularly to the houses of their masters or patrons. No matter where these subordinates or disciples lived or how far it was, they went out of their way to offer greetings.
Even apprentices and maidservants on servants’ leave visiting their parents’ homes—this was the custom.
Even if the days change, it becomes the sixteenth day of New Year or Obon.

Visiting places like Enmado, Jūōdō, and Jizōdō was a commemoration of days when souls are most active; thus, they went to offer greetings before those who safeguard souls.
This must be for one’s own soul.
Also, returning home—as Buson said, “Do you not see?”—
The late Taigi’s poem.
“On servants’ leave, to sleep alone beside one’s parent.”
They did not stop by to renew such sorrow.
Rather than greetings to their parents, they went to offer ceremonial congratulations to their parents’ souls.

“Omedetō” has become a term exclusive to New Year’s, but in reality, it was a phrase uttered by those bearing the name “child”—that is, disciples and apprentices—when they visited their masters’ or patrons’ houses during the two annual servants’ leaves. Even the Son of Heaven, supreme ruler of all under heaven, came to be counted among retired emperors and empress dowagers. Across court nobles, samurai, and commoners, it is a vestige of the practice of regularly visiting the homes of those they relied upon as superiors to say *omedetō*. It means “May you be auspicious,” not rejoicing in the spring of mutual joy. The soul of the superior who has had “omedetō” directed at them becomes imbued with it and thus turns auspicious. This became fixed to the servants’ leave for servants and brides/grooms, and *omedetō* came to be uttered even by teachers when directing it at students. This is a mistake—in the past, it would have been a grave matter. It would have amounted to pledging all at once to place themselves beneath their subordinates. Regions where people say “omedetō” during Obon have become few and far between. But you must be familiar with the terms Living Obon and living spirits. Before the Obon for welcoming the sacred spirits, they went to pacify the living spirits. From around the Muromachi period, they seem to have referred to them as “congratulatory matters,” so even during Obon, they recited “congratulations.” The New Year’s “omedetō,” as a celebratory rite for the year’s beginning, has had its original meaning forgotten, while Obon alone has been carried on as an odd custom.

From quite ancient times on this day, fixed in the midst of summer, people would bring salted mackerel as gifts and go to pay respects to their parents’ and masters’ houses.
That fish—a prime example of blue-backed varieties—also bore the ancient name *saba*.
Yet one cannot claim that even the gift fish came to be named *saba* simply because people called what they took at that time by that name.
I likely brought rice cakes, millet cakes, rice dumplings, and even hand-molded botamochi—all prepared from first harvest offerings—but in regions where this custom flourished, perishable rice-based items would accumulate in large households until they became unmanageable. Thus even as those partial to salted or fresh provisions began introducing salted fish—a practice that gradually took hold—these tribute offerings were still called nothing but *saba*.
This led people to perceive contradictions like “Why call it *saba* when it’s red sardines?”—and I suspect this ultimately settled them on salted mackerel.
In wealthy households with many disciples and subordinates, such offerings must have piled up like goods at a salt vendor’s shop.
The plea “Please continue your patronage unchanged this year” belongs to later times; in antiquity, people went to swear “I remain your disciple, your retainer, this year too.”
This was demonstrated through subordinates reciting words celebrating their superiors’ longevity.
When it comes to phrases like *omedetō*, though brief in form, reaching such fixity appears to have required an extensive history.

Having reached this point, the discussion could finally turn to the previous emperor’s New Year’s ceremonies, the divine congratulatory addresses (*kamigoto*), and the heavenly deity’s longevity prayers (*tenjin suji*). Such a long-established house would recite celebratory addresses recounting how it came to dedicate loyal service to the Son of Heaven in antiquity; following those texts verbatim and emulating their ancestors’ deeds, its members swore to serve the reigning emperor precisely as their imperial forebears had received such devotion. Then, continuing from there, they recited in succession the health benedictions once offered to those ancestral sovereigns of old, ensuring these words reached the living spirits dwelling within His Majesty’s person.

This custom persisted indefinitely, and even among the common people, *omedetō* was not something uttered by subordinates.
By saying “Oo” and scratching their chins, they sufficed.

No matter how much they cried out against complicated formalities and for lifestyle reform, the crumbling beneath their very words must have been because everyone still did not wish to abandon them.
Even when "omedetō" had crumbled to the point where its original meaning was no longer discernible, it could not be easily cast aside precisely because it was a long-standing folk tradition—one that could not be dismissed merely by labeling it as "ancient."

Eight

When an era arrived in which the townspeople’s prosperity grew, relationships formed where they became each other’s patrons and engaged in reciprocal patronage.

During the era when artisan song competitions and picture scrolls flourished abundantly, the status of the patron class and that of the producer class were clearly distinct.
Craftsmen were people who faced nothing but patrons in society—a trade where they could not hold their heads high no matter which way they turned—engaged solely in production and labor for others.
From lower-ranking priests and Onmyōji who did little more than chant the Nakatomi Purification Ritual to itinerant monks reciting altar sutras, extending to what we now call various craftsmen, small-scale farmers, hunters, and fishermen—most of these people made their living without any fixed foundation in the land.
It was an adaptation of the ancient kabu system—an era when even as patrons proliferated, the ignobility of their occupations could not be forgotten.

The majority of craftsmen were purged and became townspeople, and as the purchasing power of the townspeople grew, mutual trade among them flourished.
When both parties became each other’s patrons and sellers, the supply-demand relationship—a remnant of the era that had established superiors and inferiors—led to New Year’s “omedetō” being exchanged from both sides.
In this way, the places requiring courtesy visits multiplied excessively, and ultimately, the order between those who received blessings and those who bestowed them became disordered.

There was a group of craftsmen who chanted these congratulatory phrases wherever they went without fail.
They were what might be called ritual celebrants.
Originally, even these individuals were strictly affiliated with a single household or shrine-temple; however, some among them had deliberately entered such patronage under specific conditions, and gradually gained greater autonomy.
From temples they were called chanting gate priests; from Onmyōji practitioners, Senju Manzai performers; shrines too had their sangaku entertainers—they indiscriminately expanded their patron territories.
One might assume they were divine beings exclusively serving a grand shrine, yet many simultaneously held roles as acolytes or musicians at major temples.
They were musicians of Kasuga Shrine who also belonged to Yakushi-ji Temple, performing congratulatory rites even for Kyoto’s court nobles, samurai families, and temple authorities.
Beyond congratulatory rites, they performed dances, kyōgen farces, and noh chants.

Among these groups, some skillfully ingratiated themselves with patrons and were promoted from peers to samurai status, but those who could not manage such social maneuvering fell to the lowest of the low.
From this class emerged Noh actors, manzai tayū, kuse mai performers, ritual dance tayū, Kabuki actors, and the like.
Even more pitiable was that those who had no chance to recover were lumped together as one.
The ones who utter words of celebration are those very people.
They were referred to by taking the single character 祝 from “congratulatory rites.”
Depending on the region, the structuring and interpretation of the outcast class varied, and even among villages that shared the same derogatory designation, they were not all the same type of artisan villages.

But the phrases that manifested a mysterious effect once chanted were uniform.
Later, as various techniques accumulated, gradually altered phrases began to emerge.
These congratulatory rites gradually became entertainment-oriented and then began turning artistic; comedic elements had developed quite early on, and while master singers emerged in chants and such, the refinement of the lyrics remained most delayed.

The congratulatory rites that were effective precisely because of their uniformity were rooted in the lineage of ancient celebratory addresses.
It was the power of celebratory addresses that rendered unnecessary any consideration of seasonal appropriateness for each occasion, as would later be required in festive texts.
Once a celebratory address was chanted, the divine power said to have first proclaimed that oath descended upon its subject just as it had in ancient times.
The spirits that became its subject felt the same effect as during the first utterance and swore obedience.
Everything returned to how it had been in the past.
To strengthen this effect, they performed the celebratory address as *wazaogi* to demonstrate its power.
Even when phrases changed with many added references to the past, through the original potency of the texts and the supplementary *wazaogi* performance, they returned the village to its primordial antiquity in one stroke.
Today became antiquity.
The villagers now believed for the first time that the god had come and bestowed effects upon the spirits.
The source of this power lay in the celebratory addresses.
Celebratory addresses renewed all things.
To renew was to repeat.
Just as *sara* had long carried connotations of newness—rather than saying it restored things to their origin—the celebratory address became its beginning at that very moment.

*Sara* is the adverbial form of *saru*.
*Saru* in the sense of coming and departing refers to arriving from the beyond.
The Sarugaku performances of early spring were likely held since ancient times, but *saru*—now avoided as inauspicious—may have been nearly synonymous with *ga o tsuto* [ritual renewal].
Was not Sarume no Kimi's *saru* also an occupational title for priestesses who summoned the past?