ABSTRACT
Ask any Japanese, and he is likely to tell you that deifying humans is just one of those Japanese customs. Perhaps he will even add, that foreigners do not understand. In fact, however, the number of clearly identifiable historical figures who have been deified is not all that great. In the ancient and medieval periods, even if we include such doubtful instances as Hachiman (apocryphally identified with Emperor Ōjin) and Sugawara no Michizane (whose shrine, initially, at least, was intended to placate his angry spirit, his onryō and not to worship his person), we still only have a handful of cases. It is true that, once we have entered into the Edo Period, numbers increase. In this period, even living people were deified, and in considerable numbers, as is documented in Katō Genchi’s study of this subject. 1 Later, in the Meiji Period, building shrines for the dead and worshipping them almost became a fashion. Well-known examples are the Heian Jingū in Kyoto (for emperors Kanmu and Kōmei), or the Meiji Jingū (for emperor Meiji), Nogi Jinja (for general Nogi Maresuke), and Yasukuni Jinja in Tokyo. This, however, was a new development.
