ABSTRACT
This chapter represents a first attempt to clarify the role of Jade Women, a somewhat unobtrusive type of female deity from the Daoist pantheon, in early Japanese religion. Today the Jade Women are discussed by scholars of Japanese religion primarily on account of the role that they played within medieval Japanese religious discourse. This chapter argues that there is perhaps an even larger story to be told: namely that hundreds of years before Jade Women began appear in the dreams of medieval Japanese Buddhist monks and in the rites of the ynyng masters. A contemplation of Daoist deities and practices in the context of the migration of cultural, technological and, religious cultures to the Japanese islands forces to think of religion as something on the move. Powerful evidence happened to the Jade Women can be found in recent archaeological discoveries in the Matsuura district of Hizen Province in what is now Saga Prefecture in Kysh.
