Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 1990 17/2-3 The Sujin Religious Revolution

The Kojiki and Nihonshoki accounts of the reign of the Sujin emperor, Mimaki-iri-hiko，conventionally dated 97-30 b.c.e.，make it clear that this era marked a decisive departure from what went before, above all in court religion and the relation of religion to the state. This paper argues that his reign should actually be dated much later, perhaps ca 300-318 c.e ” and more significantly that it followed the reign (conventionally dated 201-269 c.e.) of the shamaness-queen known to those chronicles as Okinaga-tarashi-hime，or the Jingo empress. My case also depends on the common identification of her, or her era, with the Pimiko of the Chinese Wei chih 魏 志.2 In this light, certain cultic events associated with Sujin’s era can be under stood as nothing less than spiritual revolution. The removal of the great goddess Amaterasu from the imperial shrine to remote Ise, and the discrediting of the shamaness Yamato-totohi-momoso-nime in favor of revelations received through dreams by the sovereign himself, turned prevailing norms or imperial religion upside down. The upheaval’s fundamental motif was the replacement of Jingo-era female deities above and priestesses below with male counterparts — the “patriarchal revolution ” which certain theorists have suggested occurred in many parts of the world as Neolithic culture gave way to metallurgy and the dawn of history (Stone 1976). 1 Some o f the arguments of this paper were presented in preliminary form in ELLWOO