Futodama
Japanese · deity · primordial · Recorded classification
Every shimenawa in Japan — the twisted rice-straw rope with paper streamers, hung across a shrine gate or round a tree or a rock — is that rope. It does not sanctify what it encloses so much as mark a boundary that something is not to cross, and the original use was to stop the sun going back into a hole. The Inbe lost the long political argument with the Nakatomi, which is why there are Fujiwara in every Japanese history book and almost no Inbe.
Domains
- ritual
- divination
Relations
- companion: Ame-no-KoyaneReference treatment of the two as jointly responsible for the divination. (secondary)
Sources
- Futodama performed the rock-cave divination with Ame-no-Koyane and stretched the shimenawa across the cave mouth to keep Amaterasu out of it; he is the ancestral deity of the Inbe clan.: Reference treatments of Futodama, the shimenawa and the Inbe clan. (secondary)