ABSTRACT
The name Nibukawakami (丹生川上) appears in the national records before the establishment of the Empire. We read in Nihonshoki that “Kamu Iwarehiko-no-Mikoto taking 80 platters and jars (嚴攬) made from the clay of heavenly Mt. Kagu (天香 具山), went to the upper waters of the river Nibu and sacrificed to the Gods of Heaven and Earth.” It was here also that shortly afterwards he sank the jars and made divination as to the success of his expedition and we read “plucking up a 500 branched sakaki tree of the upper waters of the river Nibu, he did worship therewith to all the Gods.” Whether this has direct connection with the establishment of the Nibukawakami shrine or not is a question, but undoubtedly a spot with such auspicious associations would have been regarded as sacred. In this connection the exact location and the date of the first palace at Yoshino is of interest. Historians generally consider that it was not till the reign of the Emperor Ojin that a palace was built at Yoshino, but Moriguchi Narakichi (森口奈良吉), the present Gūji of Yoshida Jinja in Kyōto, who has made a close study of everything to do with Nibukawakami, and to whose efforts the rediscovery of the shrine are due, is strongly of opinion that the first Emperor Jimmu had a palace at Yoshino from the very commencement of his reign, and that the site was that subsequently occupied by Nibukawakami Jinja. Proof positive he cannot offer but in support of his contention he quotes a poem composed by Yamabe-no-Akahito in Tempyō 8 (A.D. 736). It runs as follows: “Oh ye mountains and rivers of Yoshino, is it not owing to your beauty that the Emperors since the God age have proceeded to the palace there and ruled the country.”
