The ''Oomoto Shin'yu'' (大本神諭) is a sacred scripture of

Oomoto file:Chouseiden.jpg, 200px, ''Chōseiden'' (長生殿) in Ayabe, Kyoto, Ayabe , also known as , is a religion founded in the 1890s by Nao Deguchi, Deguchi Nao (1836–1918) and Onisaburo Deguchi, Deguchi Onisaburō (1871–1948). Oomoto is typ ...

, a

Japanese new religion Japanese new religions are new religious movements established in Japan. In Japanese, they are called or . Japanese scholars classify all religious organizations founded since the middle of the 19th century as "new religions"; thus, the term refe ...

founded in 1892 by

Nao Deguchi Nao Deguchi (January 22, 1837 – November 16, 1918) was a Japanese religious leader who founded the Oomoto religion together with Onisaburo Deguchi. The origins of Oomoto began when she was possessed by a spirit called Ushitora no Konjin in ...

. Beginning in 1892, it was originally dictated by Nao Deguchi and written on paper in

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", ...

. The manuscript, originally known as the ''Ofudesaki'' or ''Fudesaki'' (not to be confused with 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 ...

'' of

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 ...

by Miki Nakayama), was later reinterpreted and edited by

Onisaburo Deguchi , born Kisaburō Ueda 上田喜三郎 (1871–1948) was a Japanese religious leader. Together with his mother-in-law Nao Deguchi, he was one of the two spiritual leaders of the Oomoto religious movement in Japan. While Nao Deguchi is the of ...

to become the ''Oomoto Shin'yu''. Onisaburo Deguchi glossed the original

kana are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...

text with

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 ...

and prepared it for publication. During the course of editing the manuscript, Onisaburo Deguchi altered some of the meanings of the original text, since he and Nao Deguchi had differing beliefs. As a result, the Nao Deguchi's original unedited, unpublished manuscript is referred to as the ''Ofudesaki'', while Onisaburo Deguchi's edited version is known ''Oomoto Shin'yu''. The text has 277 sections, organized by date starting from 1892 up until Nao Deguchi's death in 1918. The best-known, most widely quoted section is the first one from January 1892. As a

millenarian Millenarianism or millenarism () is the belief by a religious organization, religious, social, or political party, political group or Social movement, movement in a coming fundamental Social transformation, transformation of society, after which ...

text, much of the ''Oomoto Shin'yu'' states that

Ayabe Ayabe (Japanese:綾部) may refer to: Places *Ayabe, Kyoto, a city in the Kyoto Prefecture. * Ayabe Domain, a feudal domain in Japan during the Edo period * Mount Ayabe, a mountain in Tatsuno, Hyōgo, Japan People * Kakeru Ayabe (綾部翔, born ...

would become the new spiritual center of the world, and that the world is about to experience a complete renewal.

Origins

The original manuscript was called ''Ofudesaki'' or ''Ofudegaki'' by Nao (not to be confused with the ''

'' of

). Encompassing roughly 200,000 pages of Japanese paper, it is written entirely in uneven

which even Oomoto followers regard as unskilled. It is claimed that Deguchi was illiterate, and that the text is an emanation of a powerful

kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...

named Ushitora no Konjin. The first writing includes a warning that Tokyo would become a wilderness, and

would become the capital. When Nao began to produce this document, people thought she was insane. However, in 1892, she predicted the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 189417 April 1895), or the First China–Japan War, was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon, Korea. In Chinese it is commonly known as th ...

two years before it happened. When the war broke out, people began to take her more seriously. A key theme of the text is the of the world, or literally the .

Publication history

The modern publication of the ''Ofudesaki'' by the Oomoto organization is called ''Oomoto Shin'yu''. There are a number of issues with this publication. Since the original contained prophecies of war with America and attacks on the Emperor, the text was temporarily banned in 1920 and heavily censored when it was finally published, and no version survives without the censor's black marks. It is suspected that a military official had a hand in its editing, against Nao's specific request. Oddly, one of the original verses read, "Not a single word of this writing is inaccurate," which seems to preclude editing. There are numerous editions of the ''Oomoto Shin'yu''. A 5-volume edition was published in 1968, and a 7-volume edition was published by Tenseisha (天声社), Oomoto's publishing house, in 1983. The most recent edition was published by Aizen Sekaisha (愛善世界社), the official publishing house of the Oomoto Foundation, in 5 volumes from 2010–2012.

Translations

Ofudesaki - The Holy Scriptures of Oomoto

Only partial translations of the ''Oomoto Shin'yu'' exist in English, Esperanto, Portuguese, and other languages, all of which omit anti-foreign passages in Nao Deguchi's original version. An English translation of the ''Oomoto Shin'yu'' was published in 2008. It was originally written in 1974 as an Oomoto internal document with the cooperation of British Oomoto researchers Mrs. Worcester and Mrs. Cox, and American researcher Richard Steiner. There is also a 1999 abridged

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

translation by Shigeki Maeda, titled ''Diaj Revelacioj'', with a total of 837 numbered paragraphs. ''Revelações Divinas'', an abridged 2000 Portuguese version directly translated by Benedicto Silva from the ''Diaj Revelacioj'' in Esperanto, is published by Oomoto do Brasil, the Brazilian branch of Oomoto.

List of sections

Below is a list of the 277 sections in the ''Oomoto Shin'yu'', which are titled according to the date that the text was divinely revealed.

References

External links