Oe no Masafusa and the Spirit of Michizane
1995; Sophia University; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2385549
ISSN1880-1390
Autores Tópico(s)Chinese history and philosophy
ResumoT ODAY, Tenjin RT worship flourishes as a Shinto cult dedicated to the spirit of Sugawara no Michizane 1 845-903, in his day Japan's most distinguished man of letters. In recognition of his talents, he was promoted to high office, only to be slandered by political rivals and exiled to Kyushu as the nominal Supernumerary Governor General of Dazaifu.1 There he was treated as a criminal and died a failure in his mortal career. His posthumous career, however, proved more successful. Fear of his angry ghost led to his pardon, promotion, and eventually, in the mid-tenth century, his apotheosis as Tenjin, 'the heavenly deity'. Japan had other and older heavenly deities, but none enjoyed the lasting popularity of this one. As the years passed, Tenjin worship proved to be a marvelously adaptablc faith. Perhaps its most consistent feature has been its enduring ability to capture the imagination and devotion of people with highly diverse interests. In metaphorical terms, it was, and still is, rather like a mirror, a favored metaphor among historians in both China and Japan. For them, historical writings were idealized mirrors that accurately reflected events of the past. Tenjin worship, in contrast, seems more like an actual mirror used most often to reflect the viewer's own image. Since religion is in the realm of the spiritual rather than the physical, the mirror of Tenjin does not reflect literal images. Instead, it reveals the dreams, or occasionally nightmares, of those who gaze into it. Founders of Tenjin worship, for example, included Michizane's descendants and their disciples who had maintained the family's tradition by becoming academicians and in Tenjin saw an epitome of learning whose great achievements they sought to emulate. The progeny of Michizane's formei
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