More about Amenominkanushi

Amenominakanushi no Kami in Late Tokugawa Period KokugakuI

SASAKI Kiyoshi
1. Introduction

Japanese academics have been quick to point out the influence of Christianity on Japanese Kokugaku.II The particular aspect of that issue I wish to raise here is the claim that Christian influence is apparent in Hirata Atsutane's emphasis on a creator deity, and that such influence made its way into the Shinto thought of the Meiji period. For example, Ebisawa Arimichi stated1 that

Atsutane grasped the concept of a creator god, and recognized that the emperors forming the descendants of that creator god were absolute beings in a sense even greater than that admitted by Norinaga. In other words, by introducing a creator deity to restoration Shinto, the spiritual basis for a restoration of imperial rule was strengthened, and by viewing the Japanese emperors as descendants of the same Amenominakanushi no kami who created the world and entire universe, Kokugaku's Japano-centric thought formed one factor promoting the establishment of absolute emperorism upon the conceptual basis of "all eight corners of the world under one roof."III

Ishida Ichirô, who called Hirata's thought "syncretic Shinto-Christian Shinto" (Shin-Ki shûgô Shintô), adopted the same viewpoint when he stated,

Hirata Atsutane, who called himself Motoori's posthumous disciple,IV authored the work Honkyô gaihen with the appended comment "not to be shown to others." As a private work, he considered it "Shintoistic self-exhortation" [honkyô jibensaku]; in fact, it was after he wrote Honkyô gaihen that he penned all his other works relating to Shinto. This Honkyô gaihen is, as a matter of fact, a replication of a book of Christian apologetics, or else a satire of such a work, in which Atsutane models Amenomina-kanushi no kami after the deus of Christianity as a creator and ruler of all things, who dispenses rewards and punishments to human beings in accord with actions during their lives, and who leads good souls to heaven and casts evil souls into an underworldly hell. This syncretic Shinto-Christian "Hirata Shinto" became the rallying ideology of the sonnô ["revere the emperor"] movement in the late Tokugawa period, as is evident from such works as Shimazaki Tôson's Yoakemae ["Before the dawn"]. And that same Hirata Shinto became linked to the movement for the "Dissemination of the Great Teaching" (taikyô senpuV) in the early Meiji period, and to State Shinto from the last half of the Meiji period.2

Needless to say, both Ebisawa and Ishida base their claims on the presumption that Hirata was influenced by Christianity. Most scholars of the Shinto and Kokugaku persuasion, on the other hand, are more diffident with regard to the influence of Christianity on Hirata. As I have argued elsewhere,3 it is impossible to establish with certainty that Hirata developed his thought based upon an acceptance of Christianity. While it is true that Hirata emphasized Amenominakanushi no kami, his thought is not so simple as to allow one to conclusively establish that such emphasis was the direct result of Christian influence. In short, it must be said that the attempt to directly link Hirata's thought and the early Meiji-period Taikyô Senpu Undô, which was centered on a creator-god concept, represents a distortion of Hirata's thought.

Transcending earlier philological interpretations, the nativists who followed Hirata in the late Tokugawa period continued to maintain a foundation in the myths of the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, but came to the point of proposing a new cosmology. The concept of kami in the early years of Meiji cannot be considered while ignoring the intellectual contributions of this group. In turn, the structure of the cosmology they were attempting to achieve can be seen by studying their idea of Amenominakanushi no kami. Toward that end, it is first necessary to understand the relation of Amaterasu ômikami and Ôkuninushi no kami to that cosmological structure.

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