Dragon Palace

The Princess of the Dragon Palace.
A New Shinto Sect is Born

Author(s): Ben-Ami Shillony
Source: Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 177-182
Published by: Sophia University
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Brief Note
The Princess of the Dragon Palace
A New Shinto Sect Is Born
by BEN-AMI SHILLONY
T
s
HE
religious scene of
Japan
is full of
surprises. Recently
on a visit I had
the opportunity to stay for a few days with the members of a new Shinto
sect that questions the legitimacy of the imperial family, demands female
domination, identifies Susa-no-o Aft:3 with Jehovah, and venerates a statue
of Jesus Christ in one of the sacred shrines of Shinto.
The group, which is based in Osaka, is headed by a sixty-year-old shamaness,
Fujita Himiko E1l2A-, who in many ways fits the description of founders of
New Religions in Japan as delineated by Carmen Blacker.' Fujita comes from
a poor family in Kumamoto, where her father was a policeman. In 1940 she
graduated from a girls' high school in Kurume and went to work in a factory.
As she spent much of her life in poverty and hard work, she had no opportunity
to marry. At the age of thirty-five she felt a strong urge to dedicate herself to
religion and so, joining the shugendo jSA sect of esoteric Buddhism, she lived
for some time with the yamabushi LUPf on Mt Omine. She later went to India and
studied Tibetan lamaism there.
On 7 October 1973, while visiting the sacred Shinto site of Amanoiwato in her
native Kumamoto prefecture, she underwent a forceful mystical experience. She
felt the deity Ryuigiu Otohime UgZ# enter her body and become one with her.
At that moment, she says, she herself turned into Ryiigui Otohime, an ancient
goddess reborn in a living human body. She subsequently made a study of Shinto
and shamanism, and in 1981 she was awarded the title of kami-miko tE*, or
'divine shamaness', by the Izumu Daiingui Shrine in Kameoka near Kyoto,
where Ryuigui Otohime had originally been enshrined. With the support of that
THE AUTHOR is Associate Professor in the
Department of East Asian Studies, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
1 Carmen Blacker, 'Millenarian Aspects of
the New Religions in Japan', in Donald H.
Shively, ed., Tradition and Modernization in
Japanese Culture, Princeton U.P., 1971, pp.
563-600; The Catalpa Bow: A Study of
Shamanistic Practices in Japan, Allen &
Unwin, London, 1975.
178 Monwnenta Nipponica, xxxix:2
shrine she adopted the deity's name and pronounced herself to be the goddess
incarnate.
As in the case of other founders of New Religions in Japan, the deity that
possessed Fujita was a minor figure in the Shinto pantheon. Ryuigui Otohime
is known from the popular legend about Urashima Taro 'AhkM, a young fisher-
man who a long time ago (according to the Nihongi I
*#, the date was A.D. 478)
caught a tortoise in his net. Pitying the little creature, he threw it back into the
sea, whereupon the tortoise turned into a beautiful goddess, Ryulgul Otohime,
Princess of the Dragon Palace. Urashima followed the princess to the bottom
of the ocean, where they married and lived happily for many years. One day
Urashima became homesick and asked permission to visit his parents. The princess
agreed on condition that he carry with him a lacquer box which on no account
should he ever open; she then turned back into a tortoise and carried him to the
shore. On reaching his village, Urashima was astonished to find it inhabited by
total strangers and realized that many centuries had passed since he had left home.
He made his way back to the shore and, while waiting for the tortoise to reappear,
he could not resist the temptation of opening the lacquer box. The waft of smoke
that billowed out was delayed time. Within seconds Urashima's body aged, his
skin shriveled, his hair turned white, and he died.
According to Fujita's interpretation, Ryfigfi Otohime is the deity destined to
save mankind, Urashima represents the human race that was almost saved but
was punished because it had sinned, and the palace at the bottom of the ocean
symbolizes paradise where mankind will live forever after being saved.
Somewhat like Omoto k*, another Shinto sect with a millenarian nature,
Fujita's theology is an amalgam of Shinto legends, Buddhist concepts, shamanistic
practices, Christian beliefs, and ideas taken from Western science and occultism.
Fujita admits that she was influenced by Deguchi Nao
nPik,
the woman founder
of Omoto, and Omoto's headquarters in Kameoka is close to the Izumu Daijingui
of Otohime.
The most surprising aspect of the Ryuigui Otohime group is that although it
is thoroughly Shintoist, it opposes the present emperor as well as the imperial
line. According to Fujita's associates, the present emperor is not really the son
of the Emperor Taish6. Furthermore, even if he were the real son of that emperor,
he would still lack legitimacy, because he and his ancestors are descendants of the
Northern branch of the imperial line, which usurped the throne from the legitimate
Southern branch in the fourteenth century. Fujita's opposition to the imperial
family goes back even further. She maintains that the sun goddess, Amaterasu
Omikami
XR)MO,
usurped the monarchy from her elder brother, the storm
god Susa-no-o, whom she sent into banishment. As a result the imperial family,
which descends from the sun goddess, is an illegitimate usurper dynasty, the
long rule of which has brought down on Japan many calamities, including the
tragedy of the Pacific War. The only way for Japan to save itself from even greater
disasters in the future is to restore the monarchy to the legitimate house of Susa-
no-o.
SHILLONY: The Princess of the Dragon Palace 179
The group does not point to any rival imperial family as the descendants of
Susa-no-o, but it does identify that deity with Ryuigii, the Dragon King of the sea.
This identification means that Ryiigul Otohime, the daughter of the Dragon
King, is also the legitimate ruler of Japan. This conclusion is not spelled out
explicitly, but the cover of the group's booklet, Ryuigu no Shiori U9 A, published
in June 1983, carries a picture of Fujita dressed in white imperial robes and
wearing a crown on her head.
To stress its loyalty to the Susa-no-o cause, the group worships at Izumu
Daijingul, which is believed to be the original Izumu Shrine (Moto Izumu) of
Susa-no-o before he was banished to the coast of the Sea of Japan. They also
organize pilgrimages to the Moto Ise Shrine on Mt Oe, believed to be the original
Ise Shrine, and to the Kono Shrine near Amanohashidate, which still professes
loyalty to the deposed Southern branch of the imperial dynasty.
Having challenged the imperial establishment of Japan, Fujita goes on to chal-
lenge its social establishment. She criticizes the bureaucratic East, that is, the
Kanto region, and praises the 'cultural and human' West. Most of her followers
come from the Kansai and Kyushu regions. The true meaning of the name
Urashima, she claims, is 'the rear of the island', that is, the exploited and neglected
West.
Japanese society, according to Fujita, is dominated by males. The reversal of
the social order that she preaches goes back, like the divine reversal, to time
immemorial when women ruled society. The rule of men, she claims, has brought
with it immense sorrows to the world and it is time for the roles to change. Only
a mother deity can save the world from its sufferings. Ryuigu no Shiori opens with
the slogan, 'O mother god, save the world!', and later, on p. 12, there is the
following passage:
Man is human, but woman is divine. Men therefore should respect women and
learn from them. If a man tries to lord it over women and treat them contemptuously
at home, at work, or at recreation, he is far removed from god and will not receive
the passport to paradise, no matter how pious his religious beliefs may be. Only
when all males revere all females and regard them as descendants of the mother god
will the human race be saved from destruction.
This extreme brand of feminism is shared by Fujita's disciples, who treat her
as a divine mother figure. She recently married her male secretary, Kawami
Yoshiharu )IIXt, who is about twenty years her junior. Kawami, who is in
charge of the group's publications, stays at home most of the time involved in the
domestic chores. Both in public and private he addresses his wife as Otohime-
sama.
In her search for the 'real', forgotten, and oppressed elements of Japanese
society, Fujita found the hisabetsu burakumin
RIJINR.
These oppressed
people are, according to her, the indigenous inhabitants of the Japanese islands,
which in the distant past were overrun by stronger invaders from the Asian main-
land, now the main stock of the Japanese people. These invaders enslaved the
native population, forced them to perform ignoble tasks, and finally turned them
180 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:2
into outcasts. The salvation of Japan will start with their liberation. In order to
show her sympathy for these people, Fujita established her residence and head-
quarters in an apartment house in a section of Osaka which, according to her, is
inhabited mainly by hisabetsu burakumin. She has also rented a farmhouse in
a hisabetsu burakumin village in nearby Kameoka, where she meets her followers
once a week.
Yet another group of 'forgotten Japanese' to which Fujita has directed her
attention are the almost extinct sanka i4, or mountain dwellers of western
Japan. These nomadic gypsy-like people, who used to make a living by hunting,
fortune telling, illegal trade, and hiring themselves out as ninja ,Ut, have been
discriminated against throughout most of Japanese history. Fujita's secretary-
husband Kawami is a descendant of sanka.
Carmen Blacker has pointed out that New Religions often have a yonaoshi -ai:,
or 'world reform', element that makes them preach the reversal of the existing
social order.2 In the doctrines of the Otohime sect this reversal appears to have
reached a peak unsurpassed by any other sect. Further, the anthropologist Cor-
nelius Ouwehand has observed that millenarian expectations in mid-nineteenth-
century Japan found their artistic expression in namazu-e BE, or catfish prints.3
It is indeed revealing to note that the image of a fish occupies a central position
in the world of the Otohime group. Fujita refers to herself as a ningyo A), or
mermaid, and her name card carries the picture of a fish. She mentions the miracles
performed by Jesus Christ on and around the sea as well as the fish symbol used
by early Christians. She claims that the Japanese words ama X (sky), ama i#c
(woman diver), ama JE (nun), ama R11 (nurse), ame fi (rain), umi i# (sea), and
umu it (to give birth), all come from the same root, which proves that woman,
god, and water are identical.
Like Omoto, the Otohime group preaches an ideology that is both national-
istic and universalistic. Its nationalism is rooted in Shinto mythology and in the
sacredness of the Japanese islands and the Japanese people. According to Fujita,
Japan is the source of all cultures. In ancient times, when Mt Fuji was much bigger
than it is now, culture originated in Japan and then flowed to all parts of the world,
only to return later in the form of 'foreign influences'. Thus, according to her,
Chinese kanji developed from Japanese kana, and not vice versa as is commonly
supposed. And just as Japan was the source of all culture, so it will also possess
the final culture of the world, and the messiah will come from Japan.
Notwithstanding this flamboyant nationalism, the group is also extremely
cosmopolitan in outlook. For the past decade Fujita has been traveling through-
out the world in search of the common roots of all religions and cultures. All the
religions that she has encountered are regarded as local revelations of Shinto
deities and have been assigned their proper place in her Shinto pantheon. On
2
Blacker, 'Millenarian Aspects', p. 594.
3 Cornelius Ouwehand, Namazu-e and
Their Themes, Brill, Leiden, 1964.
SHILLONY: The Princess of the Dragon Palace 181
her visit to Israel in 1982, Fujita bought a statue of Jesus Christ in Nazareth and
later persuaded the chief priest of Izumu Daijingul to install it in his shrine. This
is possibly the only ancient Shinto place of worship in Japan where the faithful
can venerate the statue of Christ.
Fujita is also interested in Judaism, the mother religion of the West. As there
exists no equivalent statue of the Jewish deity, she erected a plate inscribed
'Ehoba' on her Shinto altar at home and placed a Hebrew bible near it so that she
and her followers can now worship Jehovah along with the Shinto deities. Ac-
cording to Ryuigu no Shiori, p. 14, 'Ehoba' is actually Susa-no-o. Fujita accepts
the biblical doctrine that the Jews are the chosen people of God and, like some of
the new Christian sects in Japan, she claims that the Japanese are the descendants
of the ten lost tribes of Israel. It follows that the biblical messiah is none other
than the daughter of Susa-no-o, that is, Ryiigui Otohime herself. Fujita's con-
viction and that of her followers that she is the messiah was strengthened by her
discovery that the day on which she became Ryiigii Otohime, 7 October 1973
(or 6 October in Israel because of the time difference), was Yom Kippur, the Day
of Atonement, the holiest Jewish day of the year, when Jews fast and pray for
their personal and collective redemption. Moreover, Yom Kippur 1973 was not
an ordinary Day of Atonement, for on that day Egypt and Syria launched a
surprise attack on Israel, which eventually overcame the invasion only with
difficulty.
Yet Fujita maintains a Shintoistic and shamanistic theory of Jewish history.
On the eve of her 1982 visit to Israel, she wrote in her magazine Gekkan Otohime
The massacre of the refugees in Beirut is a tragedy. Such a tragedy should never
occur again, it should be pulled out by its roots. But what are its roots? The angry
spirit of Israel has been haunting the world for the last four thousand years. Only
when this angry spirit is pacified can mankind be saved.
In the Shinto order of things, evil is mischief wrought by a spirit that has been
wronged in the past. To eradicate evil, angry spirits have to be pacified by treating
them well. In other words, the Jews are ultimately responsible for the troubles in
the world, but one should be nice to them to nullify their wrath.
As with the founders of other religious sects, Fujita claims to perform miracles
as proof of her divinity. She says that it was her visit to the pyramids in 1977 that
influenced President Sadat to make peace with Israel and that on her visit to
Jerusalem in 1982 she brought rain after a long period of drought. She practices
faith healing, either by touching the affected people or by praying for their health.
Fujita will also pray on request for more mundane intentions, such as business
success or passing examinations. These prayers are conducted in a special room
in her Osaka apartment, where all the deities-among them, Susa-no-o, Jehovah,
and Ryuigui Otohime herself-are housed. She is represented here by a picture of
a mermaid energing from the waves. The disciples who frequent the apartment
begin their visits by praying and clapping their hands before this picture.
182 Monumenta Nipponica, xxxix:2
Besides these strictly religious activities, Fujita is also an energetic organizer,
spending many hours each day contacting her followers by phone, arranging
meetings and pilgrimages, and attending to the financial business of the group.
Her immediate associates are young men and old women. The men, all referred to
as 'Urashima', represent a variety of occupations; among them are a computer
engineer, the proprietor of a health-food restaurant, a lecturer at a college of
Chinese medicine, a descendant of a ninja family who performs 'spirit photo-
graphy', and the editor of a journal of magic and occultism.
The group has not yet become an official religion, but it is already developing
all the trappings of a new sect. Its headquarters is organized as an association,
Ryuigiu Fuer6shippu ,
-
v-$/7 7' (Ryuigui Fellowship, abbreviated as RFS;
until last year it was called Otohime Zuireikai
ZMKg6).
The assocation publishes
Gekkan Otohime, which has changed its title this year to Ryugu Otohime, and
organizes various daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rites and events. The number
of Otohime's followers is not known because the definition of 'follower' remains
vague; some are enthusiastic disciples, others are just sympathizers. Several
hundred copies of Gekkan Otohime are printed and meetings are attended by
several dozen people. Only time will tell whether the group will develop into a
major sect or will remain a bizarre curiosity. One way or other, it provides further
evidence of the vitality and creativity that characterize the religious scene in
Japan.

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The Princess of the Dragon Palace.

A New Shinto Sect is Born

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