''Jindai moji'' or ''Kamiyo moji'' (Japanese: "characters of the

Age of the Gods In Shinto chronology, the is the period preceding the accession of Jimmu, the first Emperor of Japan. The kamiyo myths are chronicled in the "upper roll" (''Kamitsumaki'') of the ''Kojiki'' and in the first and second chapters of the '' Nihon Sho ...

") are characters said to have been used in ancient Japan. Some have claimed since the mid- Edo period that such ancient characters, for example such as Chikushi characters and

Hokkaido characters The , also known as or , are a set of characters discovered around 1886 on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. At the time of their discovery, they were believed to be a genuine script, but this view is not generally supported today.Harada Minoru s ...

, have been found in archeological remains, in

Kofun are megalithic tombs or tumuli in Northeast Asia. ''Kofun'' were mainly constructed in the Japanese archipelago between the middle of the 3rd century to the early 7th century CE.岡田裕之「前方後円墳」『日本古代史大辞典』� ...

and on mountains, but all ''jindai moji'' are generally considered to be forgeries. Hokkaido itaimoji

History

The concept of ''jindai moji'' was first addressed at the end of the

Kamakura period The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the Genpei War, which saw the struggle bet ...

. Urabe no Kanekata ( 卜部兼方) mentioned in

Shaku Nihongi is an annotated text of the '' Nihon Shoki'' compiled by Urabe Kanekata between 1274 and 1301 that is 28 volumes in length.Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten Henshū Iinkai (1986:894) Contents The 28 volumes are divided into seven sections: *volume 1 ...

(1301 or earlier) that his father, Urabe no Kanefumi, argued that the ancient Japanese could not have performed

bone A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...

-style fortunetelling with turtleshells (亀卜, ''Kameura'', " turtle fortunetelling"), as described in the Nihon Shoki, without having a writing system. The Urabe (卜部) had a family monopoly on

plastromancy Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. ''Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for the ...

(卜 : ''uranai'' divination using deer scapula or turtle plastrons), giving them a family interest in claiming perpetual service to the Imperial family even before the arrival of Chinese culture. (The modern view is that plastromancy was part of Chinese culture, and entered Japan in company with the Chinese writing system; the only candidate for the clan that brought this from China to Japan is the Urabe clan itself.) Some examples of ''jindai moji'' appeared during the Edo period, each set being named after its supposed source. Even then, the authenticity of ''jindai moji'' was supported by scholars such as Tsurumine Shigenobu ( 鶴峯戊申), and at least one scholar,

Hirata Atsutane was a Japanese scholar, conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies, and one of the most significant theologians of the Shintō religion. His literary name was , and his primary assumed name was . He also u ...

, changed his opinion from negative to positive. Other scholars, such as

Kaibara Ekken __NOTOC__ or Ekiken, also known as Atsunobu (篤信), was a Japanese Neo-Confucianist philosopher and botanist. Kaibara was born into a family of advisors to the ''daimyō'' of Fukuoka Domain in Chikuzen Province (modern-day Fukuoka Prefecture ...

, Dazai Shundai ( 太宰春台),

Kamo no Mabuchi was a ''kokugaku'' scholar, poet and philologist during mid-Edo period Japan. Along with Kada no Azumamaro, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane, he was regarded as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku, and through his research into the spiri ...

Motoori Norinaga was a Japanese scholar of ''Kokugaku'' active during the Edo period. He is conventionally ranked as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku (nativist) studies. Life Norinaga was born in what is now Matsusaka in Ise Province (now part of Mie Pre ...

and Tō Teikan ( 藤貞幹), rejected both the concepts and the claimed examples. The most famous publication denying the existence of ''jindai moji'' was ''Jindaiji ben'' (神代字弁), attached to ''Kana no motosue'' (仮字本末) by Ban Nobutomo ( 伴信友), which appeared in 1850. The skepticism about ''jindai moji'' that developed in the Edo period has been the prevailing attitude among scholars ever since.Naozumi Ochiai ''Thoughts on Japanese Ancient Characters ��本古代文字考' Komakisha 1888; republished by Yahata Shoten 1982 In 1930, a religious sect, , was charged with

lèse-majesté Lèse-majesté () or lese-majesty () is an offence against the dignity of a ruling head of state (traditionally a monarch but now more often a president) or the state itself. The English name for this crime is a borrowing from the French, w ...

by the

special higher police The , often abbreviated , was a Japanese policing organization, established within the Home Ministry in 1911, for the purpose of carrying out high policing, domestic criminal investigations, and control of political groups and ideologies deemed ...

. Amatsukyō was based around that were partly written in what its members said were ''jindai moji''. Experts in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

and other scholars gave evidence in court that the documents were forgeries. The documents and other artifacts of this sect were destroyed in the American bombardment of Tokyo during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Reasons for skepticism

# The , written in 808, clearly states that the Japanese had no writing system, and thus no characters, before

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

were imported, and nobody before Urabe no Kanekata (mentioned above) made any reference to such "ancient characters". # The examples of that have been put forward over the years have all clearly been based on Modern Japanese, which had five vowels, and not

Old Japanese is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial. Old Jap ...

, which until the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

had eight vowels. #

Shinkichi Hashimoto was a Japanese linguist, born in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Japan. Biography Hashimoto is especially noted for the discovery of Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai, which makes it clear that Old Japanese made more syllabic distinctions than later periods o ...

(1882 – 1945) studied documents written in

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this ...

during the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...

and found the

Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai is an archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period. Its primary feature is to distinguish between two groups of syllables that later merged. The existence and meaning of this system is a critical point of schol ...

, proving that there were 88 sounds in the ancient language, but have only 50 or fewer, matching the

Gojūon In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the ...

and

Iroha The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period (794–1179). The f ...

of the

. # If had been in use before the Japanese became aware of

, it is impossible to explain why they would have swiftly and totally abandoned such characters in favour of the much more complex new characters derived from China, or why they then went on to develop

hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...

and

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

, all of which are based on kanji and show no evidence of any connection with .

Claims in favor of ''jindai moji''

Some recent writers have interpreted the following passage in the

to support their view that ''jindai moji'' were in use in ancient Japan: "There are six or seven documents written in characters of

Hi Province was an ancient province of Japan, in the area of Hizen and Higo provinces. The ambit of this ancient entity is within Nagasaki, Saga and Kumamoto prefectures.; Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Hizen''" in ; "''Higo''" in . It was somet ...

(肥人の字、Ahiru characters) in the

Ministry of the Treasury The (lit. the department of the great treasury) was a division of the eighth-century Japanese government of the Imperial Court in Kyoto, instituted in the Asuka period and formalized during the Heian period. The Ministry was replaced in the Mei ...

." It was reported in the late 19th century that ancient characters had been found in

Ryukyu The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonaguni ...

and in

Ezo (also spelled Yezo or Yeso) is the Japanese term historically used to refer to the lands to the north of the Japanese island of Honshu. It included the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which changed its name from "Ezo" to "Hokkaidō" in 18 ...

. These claims received some support from mainstream scholars at the time.

Examples

*（ヲシテ文字） *（出雲文字） *（阿比留文字、肥人書） *（阿比留草文字、薩人書） *（筑紫文字） *（カタカムナ文字、八鏡化美津文字） *

（北海道異体文字、アイヌ文字） *（琉球古字） *（豊国文字、神宮文字） * （対馬文字）

Notable references

Shinmura Izuru was a Japanese linguist and essayist. He is best known for his many contributions to Japanese linguistics and lexicography. In honor of him, the Shinmura Izuru Prize is annually awarded for contributions to linguistics. Background Shinmura w ...

, 『上古文字論批判』 (Criticism of Ancient Character Theories, 1898) *

, 『國語学概論』 (Introduction to National Language Studies, 1925) * ''Geirin'' 『藝林』第4巻(1958) *Naozumi Ochiai, 『日本古代文字考』落合直澄(Thoughts on Japanese Ancient Characters, 1888) * Kiyohiko Ago, 『神代文字研究原典』(Research on Characters of the Age of the Gods, 1975)

References

External links

Jindaimoji
from the Encyclopedia of Shinto

(ancient origin theory) *
Jindai moji fonts
*

*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jindai Moji Japanese writing system Shinto Language and mysticism Hoaxes in Japan