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Onogoroshima
Onogoroshima (''Kojiki'': ''Onogoro-shima''; '' Nihon Shoki'': ''Onogoro-jima'') is an important island in Shinto. ''Onogoro'' literally means "''muddy sea has the ability to bind rocks and stones accumulated to form a bridge''". Shinto account According to the Kojiki, Onogoroshima was created (''kuniumi'') when the divine couple Izanagi and Izanami churned the sea with the Amenonuhoko (heavenly spear) from their vantage point on the floating bridge of heaven.Kurano, ''Kojiki'', page 53 When they raised the spear from the ocean, drops fell from the spear, forming the island. They built a palace on top with a great column in the middle. The siblings walked around this pillar in opposite directions, and when they encountered each other, they were married. This island is where Hiruko (Ebisu) was born. The island is mentioned only three times in the Kojiki, at ch.3:3, ch:7:25, and ch.111:32.Philippi's translation, p. 49, p. 57, and p. 306. Real-world placement In his ''Koji ...
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Kuniumi
In Japanese mythology, is the traditional and legendary history of the emergence of the Japanese archipelago, of islands, as narrated in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. According to this legend, after the creation of Heaven and Earth, the gods Izanagi and Izanami were given the task of forming a series of islands that would become what is now Japan. In Japanese mythology, these islands make up the known world. The creation of Japan is followed by the creation of the gods ('' kamiumi''). Creation story According to the Kojiki After the formation, Heaven was above and Earth was still a drifting soft mush. The first five gods named were lone deities without sex and did not reproduce. Then came the , consisting of two lone deities followed by five couples. The elder gods delegated the youngest couple Izanagi and Izanami to carry out their venerable mandate: to reach down from heaven and give solid form to the earth. This they did with the use of a precious stone-covered spear named , ...
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Izanami
, formally known as , is the creator deity of both creation and death in Japanese mythology, as well as the Shinto mother goddess. She and her brother-husband Izanagi are the last of the seven generations of primordial deities that manifested after the formation of heaven and earth. Izanami and Izanagi are held to be the creators of the Japanese archipelago and the progenitors of many deities, which include the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon deity Tsukuyomi and the storm god Susanoo. Name Her name is given in the '' Kojiki'' (ca. 712 AD) both as ''Izanami-no-Kami'' (伊弉冉神) and ''Izanami-no-Mikoto'' (伊弉冉尊), while the '' Nihon Shoki'' (720 AD) refers to her as ''Izanami-no-Mikoto'', with the name written in different characters (伊邪那美命). The names ''Izanagi'' (''Izanaki'') and ''Izanami'' are often interpreted as being derived from the verb ( historical orthography ) or ''iⁿzanap''- from Western Old Japanese 'to invite' , with ''-ki'' / ''-gi'' ...
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Kojiki
The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperial line. It is claimed in its preface to have been composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Genmei in the early 8th century (711–712), and thus is usually considered to be the oldest extant literary work in Japan. The myths contained in the as well as the are part of the inspiration behind many practices. Later, they were incorporated into Shinto practices such as the purification ritual. Composition It is believed that the compilation of various genealogical and anecdotal histories of the imperial (Yamato) court and prominent clans began during the reigns of Emperors Keitai and Kinmei in the 6th century, with the first concerted effort at historical compilation of which we have record being the one made in 620 under ...
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Locations In Japanese Mythology
In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ambiguous boundary, relying more on human or social attributes of place identity and sense of place than on geometry. Types Locality A locality, settlement, or populated place is likely to have a well-defined name but a boundary that is not well defined varies by context. London, for instance, has a legal boundary, but this is unlikely to completely match with general usage. An area within a town, such as Covent Garden in London, also almost always has some ambiguity as to its extent. In geography, location is considered to be more precise than "place". Relative location A relative location, or situation, is described as a displacement from another site. An example is "3 miles northwest of Seattle". Absolute location An absolute locati ...
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Ancient Japan
The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to prehistoric times around 30,000 BC. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC when new inventions were introduced from Asia. During this period, the first known written reference to Japan was recorded in the Chinese ''Book of Han'' in the first century AD. Around the 3rd century BC, the Yayoi people from the continent immigrated to the Japanese archipelago and introduced iron technology and agricultural civilization. Because they had an agricultural civilization, the population of the Yayoi began to grow rapidly and ultimately overwhelmed the Jōmon people, natives of the Japanese archipelago who were hunter-gatherers. Between the fourth to ninth century, Japan's many kingdoms and tribes gradually came to be unified under a centralized government, nominally controlled by the Emperor of Japan. The imperial dynasty established at ...
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Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents ; the city proper has a population of 13.99 million people. Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, the prefecture forms part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and is the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. Originally a fishing village named Edo, the city became politically prominent in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was one of the most populous cities in the world with a population of over one million people. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, which was renamed "Tokyo" (). Tokyo was devastate ...
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Iwanami Shoten Publishing
is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel ''Kokoro'', which appeared as a book in 1914 after being serialized in the ''Asahi Shimbun''. Iwanami has since become known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Japanese literature, dictionaries, and high-quality paperbacks. Since 1955, it has published the ''Kōjien'', a single-volume dictionary of Japanese that is widely considered to be authoritative. Iwanami's head office is at Hitotsubashi 2–5–5, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Company history Iwanami Shigeo founded the publishing firm Iwanami Shoten in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1913. In its early years, the company published authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Kurata Hyakuzō and Abe Jiro. It also published academic and literary journals in the field of philosophy, includi ...
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Kamiumi
In Japanese mythology, the story of the occurs after the creation of Japan (''Kuniumi''). It concerns the birth of the divine (''kami'') descendants of Izanagi and Izanami. Story According to the Kojiki, various gods were born from the relationship between Izanagi and Izanami until the fire deity, Kagu-tsuchi, at birth burned Izanami's genitals and wounded her fatally. Izanagi, witnessing the death of his beloved wife, in rage took the ten-graspA "grasp" is the breadth of four fingers when the hand is clenched. sabre and crushed his child, Kagutsuchi. A number of gods were born from the blood and remains of Kagutsuchi. Subsequently, Izanagi went to the land of Yomi (the world of the dead) to find Izanami, however when he found her, she had become a rotting corpse and from her parts other gods had arisen, causing the flight of Izanagi to the world of the living. Then Izanagi performed the misogi ritual purification through which more gods are born. The last of these are the three ...
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Magatama
are curved, comma-shaped beads that appeared in prehistoric Japan from the Final Jōmon period through the Kofun period, approximately 1000 BCE to the 6th century CE. The beads, also described as "jewels", were made of primitive stone and earthen materials in the early period, but by the end of the Kofun period were made almost exclusively of jade. originally served as decorative jewelry, but by the end of the Kofun period functioned as ceremonial and religious objects. Archaeological evidence suggests that were produced in specific areas of Japan and were widely dispersed throughout the Japanese archipelago to the Southern Koreanic kingdoms via trade routes. Jōmon period first appeared in Japan in the Final Jōmon period (1000–300 BCE), and in this period were made from relatively simple, naturally occurring materials, including clay, talc, slate, quartz, gneiss, jadeite, nephrite, and serpentinite. from the Jōmon period were irregularly shaped, lacked continuity in f ...
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Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ...
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