A Heartfelt Thought ... 2

The reason why my father said that he didn’t want to go to Kasuga-Taisha is because he wanted to respect his own ancestors. Kasuga-Taisha worships a personal god of Fujiwara family.

For generations, as a Shintoist, my father’s family has been worshipping God Susanoo. Our family has been the keeper of Susanoo’s onizuka mound. We have been told that our family’s root comes from Tachibana (橘氏) Family. And that the Tachibana Family’s root god is Susanoo. (The famous Kamibito and psychic of Showa, Matsuzo Matsushita told my father that the Tachibana Family is the ancestor of Masashige Kusunoki,a notorious samurai general of Kamakura period, and my father’s family.)

The big four noble family in Japanese history are Genji, Heishi, Fujiwara-shi and Tachibana-shi. Out of the four, Tachibana Family has taken over the karma of God Susanoo. This family had experienced the same calamity as in the mythology of Susanoo.

According to the Mythology of Japan, Susanoo had committed numerous sins at Takamagahara (heaven)
and was expelled from the World of the Gods. He was sent to Ne-no-kuni (Hell).

The truth behind this incident was that Susanoo took the blame of other gods. These gods were the bureaucratic members who were positioned under Amaterasu. Why did these gods commit such crime? The whole system of the World of the Gods was running in a pyramid like operation. Goddess Amaterasu was at the top of the pyramid and other gods lined up under her. Then God Susanoo suddenly appeared out of the blue with the same level of power as Amaterasu. The other gods were afraid of him and thought he might take over the whole system. So they laid a snare. The gods destroyed Amaterasu’s precious farm and blamed it on Susanoo. For some reason, Susanoo never said anything against the blame and silently went to Hell.

The same thing happened with the Fujiwara Family and Tachibana Family during the early Heian Period (794~). The Fujiwara Family succeeded in curry favor with the Imperial Family and became very powerful. The incident called “Jouwa no Hen (承和の変)” is one famous affair where Tachibana Family was trapped just like Susanoo in the mythology. The family that carried the karma of Susanoo has repeatedly experienced exile in history.

Even in the modern day Japan, the blaming on one person is still happening. This election of The House of Representatives was to blame former Prime Minister Aso. Our society has a habit to make one person take blame and be expelled. Is it really just that person’s fault? We have to think about that.

Going back to Kasuga-Taisha, the actual origin of this shrine is way older than 1300 years ago when the Fujiwara Family became the Uji-gami of this shrine.

Way back in the ancient days, Kasuga-Taisha was a shrine to worship Mt.Mikasa (御蓋山) as a god. Therefore, this shrine takes a very unusual style of merging the ancestral spirits and a god spirit.

The Fujiwara Family worked on foreign affairs and had a chance to learn a Tao spell from China. They learned the secret technique to worship their ancestral spirits together with a god spirit of the mountain in order to sublimate their spiritual level. This is how they succeeded in this World of Reality.

To be continued…


Ikashite-itadaite Arigato-gozaimasu

Thank you for letting us live