AMA NO IWABUNE, AMAKUDARI, HAGOROMO SETSUWA – INSTANCES OF A PERMANENT COMMUNICATION BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
There are many elements in Japanese mythology - ama no iwabune, ama no ukihashi, ama kudari, hagoromo no tennyo for instance – that point to a complex religious thinking, which induced the ancient Japanese to perceive Heaven and earth, or this world and the world of spirits, as being in constant contact, communication, and even contiguity. Some of Joseph M. Kitagawa’s essays – such as “Reality and Illusion: Some Characteristics of the Early Japanese 'World of Meaning,' Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 11/1970 - show that the early Japanese world was a “one-dimensional monistic universe”, that is, the three realms of the High Heaven, the Manifest World, and the Nether World were interchangeable, or interconnected. As Kitagawa put it, “Even the gulf between the world of the living and the world of the dead was blurred by the frequent movement of spirits and ghosts and by other channels of communication between the two realms, such as oracles, fortunetelling and divination. In other words, the world of early Shintō had a unitary meaning-structure, based upon the kami nature pervading the entire universe, which was essentially a “sacred community of living beings” all endowed with spirits or souls.” In this paper we will look at some instances of ama kudari by means of (ama no) iwafune, which “left their traces” in several jinja from the Nara-Osaka area which have iwafune in their name, and among their relics or sacred land marks.
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