Japanese mythology

Japanese mythology is traced back two thousand years, embedded in Shinto and Buddhist religions. Its stories and teachings explain and give meaning to the nature of the world, the supernatural, and the origins and significance of life. Japanese mythology offers amaranthine devotion to the ritual practices and religious events celebrating the works of a vast number of deities and spirits. The mythology weaves stories about mythological characters, humans, animals, spirits, and magical creatures affecting events important to the lives of the Japanese, and where they live in Japan from heaven and the underworld. Japanese mythology altered over the centuries, as people from other countries and cultures interacted with the Japanese. Buddhism originated in India, spread across China and Korea, working into Japanese mythology with aeonian force. Taoism with its predominance of nature guiding world order came later to Japan, bringing myths about particular rocks, trees, or a mountain.

Background

Shinto is an indigenous religion, whereas Buddhism and Taoism were introduced later. Taoism was introduced into Japan in the 600s. Buddhism and Taoism came to Japan as a result of trade and war, with the religions, myths, and cultures intermingling. Japanese myths were records of oral history until 712 CE. The Japanese Imperial Court ordered a written compilation named Kojiki of Japanese mythology. It tells the history of creation, origins of gods, and ancestry of Japanese emperors. The Japanese descend from the sun goddess Amaterasu. The dangers of oral history are that stories get lost with succeeding generations, people do not give gravitas to what they think are fables, and oral myths and legends are without evidence. Written down, the same stories are forever; the myths and legends take on divine meaning, explain, and enhance the deity; and myths in print are proof of truthfulness just because they are written. A decade after the Kojiki,the Nihongi or Chronicles of Japan appeared. It enshrines myths and legends about the genealogy of the imperial family. The popular god Hachiman, patriot of warriors, attests to the everlasting divine right of the imperial family to rule.

In Japanese mythology, deities were created at the time of the birth of the land. Then followed seven generations of males and females; twelve brother and sister deities married, giving offspring to thousands of more deities. The islands of Japan were formed from splashing drops of seawater. Gods were born from mating deities in symbolic expressions of nature and culture. In the land of darkness, they sought light and life. One female deity ate food in the land of darkness, the underworld, and could not be released. She died, and so death came to the world. The rest of the formation of the world, of Japan, is replete with myths and legends. The power and authenticity of the emperor’s linage and authentic rule are entrenched in Japanese mythology emblazoned with stories about their descendancy from gods, their goodness, strength, sweet characters, warrior prowess, and mythological powers.

Japanese Mythology Today

Rulers are treated as gods with divine authority throughout history. Ancient Rome and Egypt were so endowed. Louis VI, king of France for six decades, ruled with the Divine Right of Kings. While other rulers thought of themselves as gods, the Japanese emperor from the sixth century forward was never a god, but he was a descendant of kami (gods), in contact and inspired by them. Thus his was the word of god. By the 1930s, plenty of Japanese believed the emperor to be the manifestation of god. This unshakable, deep-rooted faith in the emperor and the militaristic passel wanting to conquer the world spreading his holiness dragooned the country into war time and again: the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 fought over Japan’s ambitions and subsequent control over Manchuria, Southern Sakhalin, and Korea. Thirty-six years later, Japan attacked the US Pearl Harbor in its "religious" war to conquer the Western hemisphere. World War II was a cultural war for the Japanese, as much as a war of Samurai tradition. Japanese myths and legends kept women subservient to men; they never spoke or ate before the men, they did not rule the house, or earn more money. These virtues stem from myths and legends in the order of creation. The Japanese viewed Westerners as concerned about making money, living luxuriously, educating their women and letting them talk too much, and their fellow Asians whom they conquered as comfort women and slaves. The Japanese mythology keeps them committed to one blood type, justifies their uniqueness as a Japanese race, and underpins a sense of communitarianism and self-sacrifice required of a people with such a distinct beginning.

The religion of Japan is Shintoism, reinforcing a fierce love of their land that was the first creation of the gods. Only Japan is divine, and all others are impious wastelands. Japan‘s belief in its divine origins and her people as descendants from gods foster a conviction of superiority bestowed on the Japanese and their belongings as a sacred power. It is the driving force, for instance, that keeps the Japanese from apologizing to the United States, Korea, China, and the Philippines whom they treated so savagely during World War II. Their myths and legends are their realities. Shinto connects the present and ancient past practiced by 80 percent of the population at 81,000 shrines. They beseech kami, but have no formal rituals. The religion is rooted in Japanese myths and legends, as pronounced in modern times as two thousand years earlier. Their mythology and legends have created a nationalism and duty to the emperor that dominates their political thinking. In twenty-first century modern, commercial, and industrialized Japan, this narrative, extending from ancient myths and legends, is relevant in the narratives of company characters, settings, and developments associated with company management. Panasonic’s founder is looked upon as the "god of management." When a company fails or its product is proven defective, management reigns in shame and sometimes commits suicide—like soldiers during the war—for not fulfilling the Japanese myths the people were born to oblige.

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