The () is a

Tenrikyo is a Japanese new religion which is neither strictly monotheistic nor pantheistic, originating from the teachings of a 19th-century woman named Nakayama Miki, known to her followers as "Oyasama". Followers of Tenrikyo believe that God of Orig ...

religious text. The text consists of 160 ''

waka WAKA (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Selma, Alabama, United States, serving as the CBS affiliate for the Montgomery area. It is owned by Bahakel Communications alongside Tuskegee-licensed CW+ affiliate WBMM (channel 22); B ...

'' poems about the

Tenrikyo creation myth The Tenrikyo creation myth is central to the Tenrikyo religion. The narrative was conveyed by the foundress Nakayama Miki in writing through the '' Ofudesaki'' and orally to her early followers. After compiling the scriptures and the manuscripts ...

promulgated by

Nakayama Miki was a nineteenth-century Japanese farmer and religious leader. She is the primary figure of the Japanese new religion Tenrikyo. Tenrikyo followers, who refer to her as Oyasama (おやさま or 親様), believe that she was settled in the Shrine ...

, the founder of the Tenrikyo religion. It was compiled in 1881 by Yamazawa Ryōsuke (山沢良助; also known as Ryōjirō), one of Nakayama Miki's close followers, and is also known as the (). Like the ''Ofudesaki'' and ''Mikagura-uta'', the ''Doroumi Kōki'' is mostly written using

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

rather than

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 and are ...

Canonical status

The ''Doroumi Kōki'' is the best known and most widely used Tenrikyo ''kōki'' (古記); there are also various other ''kōki'' texts that were composed from 1881 up until Nakayama Miki's death in 1887, including Nakayama Shinnosuke's 1881 ''kōki'' and Kita (喜多)'s 1881 ''kōki''. None of the ''kōki'' texts are part of the three basic scriptures (''sangenten'' 三原典) of Tenrikyo, which consist of the ''

Ofudesaki The Ofudesaki (おふでさき or 御筆先, "Tip of the Writing Brush") is the most important scripture in Tenrikyo. It is one of Tenrikyo's three scriptures (''sangenten'' 三原典), along with the '' Mikagura-uta'' ("The Songs for the Serv ...

'' ("The Tip of the Writing Brush"), the ''

Mikagura-uta The Mikagura-uta (みかぐらうた or 御神楽歌, ''The Songs for the Service'') is one of the three Tenrikyo scriptures, along with the '' Ofudesaki'' and the '' Osashizu''. It was composed by the foundress of Tenrikyo, Miki Nakayama, from ...

'' ("The Songs for the Service"), and the ''

Osashizu In the Tenrikyo religion, the Osashizu (Japanese: おさしづ, also お指図 or 御指図, "Divine Directions") is a written record of oral revelations given by Izo Iburi. It is one of the three scriptures (''sangenten'' 三原典) of Tenrikyo ...

'' ("Divine Directions"). As a result, today it is rarely read by Tenrikyo followers. However, in

Honmichi (also 本道 or 天理本道, ) is a Tenrikyo-based ''shinshūkyō'' (Japanese new religion). Honmichi became formally independent in 1925 under its founder, Ōnishi Aijirō (大西愛治郎), also known by the title . Despite the religion being ...

, a Tenrikyo splinter religion, the ''Doroumi Kōki'' is used as a canonical scripture.

Honbushin (or 本普請, ) is a Tenrikyo-based ''Japanese new religions, shinshūkyō'' (Japanese new religion) founded on April 26, 1961 by Ōnishi Tama (大西玉), also known as "Miroku-sama" (みろく様) in the religion. It is headquartered in Okaya ...

, which split from Honmichi in 1961, uses the ''Doroumi Kōki'' in supporting its claim that its founder was the reincarnation of Nakayama Miki.

History

During the 1880s, Nakayama Miki asked some of her followers to write down her teachings. Various poetry texts were composed by her followers, but Nakayama Miki did not end up approving any of them as official scriptures. The ''Doroumi Kōki'', composed by Yamazawa Ryōsuke (山沢良助), was among those texts. Since the ''Doroumi Kōkis creation myth conflicted with that of the official

State Shinto was Empire of Japan, Imperial Japan's ideological use of the Japanese folk religion and traditions of Shinto. The state exercised control of shrine finances and training regimes for Kannushi, priests to strongly encourage Shinto practices that ...

version promulgated by the government, copies of the text were collected and burned, as the text implicitly challenged the emperor's divinity. The text was never given official status by the Tenrikyo Church Headquarters after World War II, and it remains obscure and relatively unknown today.

Outline

Outline of the ''Doroumi Kōki'': *''Verses 1–49'': Story of Creation **''Verses 5–42'': Locating instruments and models ***''Verses 7–16'':

Izanagi Izanagi (イザナギ/伊邪那岐/伊弉諾) or Izanaki (イザナキ), formally referred to with a divine honorific as , is the creator deity (''kami'') of both creation and life in Japanese mythology. He and his sister-wife Izanami are the ...

and

Tsukiyomi , or simply or , is the moon kami in Japanese mythology and the Shinto religion. The name "Tsukuyomi" is a compound of the Old Japanese words and . The ''Nihon Shoki'' mentions this name spelled as , but this ''yumi'' is likely a variation i ...

***''Verses 17–31'':

Izanami , formally referred to with the honorific , 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 ...

and Kunisazuchi ***''Verses 32–33'':

***''Verses 34–35'': Kumoyomi ***''Verses 36–37'': Kashikone ***''Verses 38–40'': Taishokuten ***''Verses 41–42'': Ōtonobe **''Verses 43–49'': The process of creation *''Verses 50–56'': A thing lent, a thing borrowed *''Verses 57–60'': Jiba *''Verses 61–96'': Continuation of the Story of Creation *''Verses 97–108'': Grant of Safe Childbirth (''Ura-shugo'' 裏守護) *''Verses 109–120'': Illness and dust *''Verses 121–133'': Tsuki-Hi's protection *''Verses 134–143'': Directions and ''ura-shugo'' *''Verses 144–150'': The advent of various forms of salvation *''Verses 151–160/161'': Passing away for rebirth and purifying the mind

Birth of Tamahime

Verses in the ''Doroumi Kōki'' (泥海古記) were also consulted by

Ōnishi Aijirō Ōnishi Aijirō (大西愛治郎, August 26, 1881 – November 29, 1958) was a Japanese religious leader known as the founder of Honmichi, a Tenrikyo-based ''Japanese new religions, Shinshūkyō'' (Japanese new religion). Honmichi followers al ...

, the founder of the

religion, to prophesize the reincarnations of

and her family members, as explained in Forbes (2005): The original text of ''Doroumi Kōki'' verse 30 is: :ことしから三十年たちたなら / ''kotoshi kara sanjū nen tachita nara'' :はたまひめのもとのやしきへ / ''na wa tama hime no moto no yashiki e'' With additional kanji, it can be written as: :今年から三十年経ちたなら :名は玉姫の元の屋敷へ As listed in Fukaya (1983: 3), the ''innen'' () of the souls of various individuals in the ''Doroumi Kōki'' are as follows:

Directions

In the ''Doroumi Kōki'', the east is associated with three female kami, while the west is associated with three male kami. Unusually for a Tenrikyo text, the equivalent deities in Japanese Buddhism are also given. Note that the

rōmaji The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as . Japanese is normally written in a combination of logogram, logographic characters borrowe ...

transliterations below are from the ''Doroumi Kōki'', which are sometimes not the same as the standard Japanese pronunciations.

Modern versions and reprintings

After World War II, content from the ''Doroumi Kōki'' was summarized and synthesized in Tenrikyo books about the creation such as (English edition: ''The Truth of Origin'') and (English edition: ''Insights into the Story of Creation''). However, the books do not explicitly mention or cite the ''Doroumi Kōki'', but rather the ''Ofudesaki''. The ''Doroumi Kōki'' is not widely circulated today and has only been occasionally reprinted after World War II. The text (with 161 verses instead of the usual 160 published in other sources) has been reproduced with kanji glosses in a 1957 study of the ''kōki'' by

Nakayama Shōzen Nakayama Shōzen (中山正善, April 23, 1905 – November 14, 1967) was the second Shinbashira (Tenrikyo), Shinbashira of Tenrikyo. He was the first son of Nakayama Shinnosuke, the first Shinbashira, and the great-grandson of Nakayama Miki, ...

Nakayama, Shōzen (1957)
''Kōki no kenkyū'' / こふきの研究
tudy of the Kōki Tenri, Japan: Tenrikyo Doyusha. and in an appendix in Murakami (1974). A reprint of a 1946 commentary on the ''Doroumi Kōki'' by Matsumura Kichitarō (松村吉太郎) was also published in 2016.''Doroumi Kōki shishō'' / 泥海古記指掌. Hachiman shoten / 八幡書店. .

References

External links

* ''Doroumi Kōki'' (泥海古記) (1928) at

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons, or simply Commons, is a wiki-based Digital library, media repository of Open content, free-to-use images, sounds, videos and other media. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Files from Wikimedia Commons can be used ...

(The poem itself is on pp. 81–113 in the book under the section 日本の古記 (にほんこうき), or pp. 47–63 of the PDF file.) ** ''Doroumi Kōki'' (泥海古記) (1928) at the Japanese

Wikisource Wikisource is an online wiki-based digital library of free-content source text, textual sources operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole; it is also the name for each instance of that project, one f ...

Ryōsuke Yamazawa's 1881 ''Doroumi Kōki''
from Tenrikyo Resource Wiki (full original text, transliteration, and English translation)
List of known Kōki manuscripts
from Tenrikyo Resource Wiki
1881 Kōki manuscript by Shinnosuke Nakayama
from Tenrikyo Resource Wiki
1881 Kōki manuscript by Kita
(喜多) from Tenrikyo Resource Wiki {{Honbushin bottom, state=collapsed Tenrikyo texts Creation myths 1881 non-fiction books Waka (poetry) Japanese mythology