Miruku, the Bringer of the World of Plenty
Miruku is the Ryukyuan god of the world of plenty. The name is the Okinawan form of Miroku, the bodhisattva Maitreya, but in the islands the figure has become a folk deity of harvest and good fortune who comes to the villages from across the sea, from the otherworld Nirai Kanai. In festival processions — most famously the Mushāma festival of Hateruma and the harvest festivals of the Yaeyama islands, where the mask tradition is said to have spread from Tonoshiro on Ishigaki — a villager embodies the god in a large white smiling mask derived from the Chinese pot-bellied monk Budai, a long yellow robe, and a fan, leading children and dancers and beckoning in the miruku-yū, the age of peace and abundant harvests celebrated in songs such as the Miruku-bushi. The deity is generally represented as male through the Budai mask, though some island traditions regard Miruku as female.
Domains
- harvest abundance
- sea otherworld
- good fortune
Powers
- to bring the world of plenty from across the sea
- to bestow rich harvests and good fortune on the villages he visits
Epithets
- 大国ぬ弥勒 (Ufukuku nu Miruku, 'Miruku of the great land')Kishaba Eijun, Yaeyama min'yōshi [Records of Yaeyama Folk Song] (Naha: Okinawa Times, 1967) (secondary)
Sources
- Miruku is the Ryukyuan god of the world of plenty (miruku-yū), a Maitreya-derived masked deity who visits village festivals from across the sea to bestow harvests and good fortune.: C. Ouwehand, Hateruma: Socio-Religious Aspects of a South-Ryukyuan Island Culture (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985) (secondary); Miyata Noboru, 'Types of Maitreya Belief in Japan', in Alan Sponberg and Helen Hardacre (eds.), Maitreya, the Future Buddha (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) (secondary); 'Saviors Who Come from the Sea and Earth: The Jinin (眞人) of Korea and Miroku (ミロク) of Japan', Journal of Marine and Island Cultures 9/1 (2020) (secondary)