Futodama
Japanese · deity · primordial · deity
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-Koyane
Sources
- Reference treatments of Futodama, the shimenawa and the Inbe clan.