Summary
Hachiman is the kami with the most shrines in Japan, more than forty thousand, the god of war and guardian of Buddhism, worshipped as the spirit of Emperor Ōjin, the fifteenth in the traditional count of Japan's emperors. His old name is Yahata, "eight banners" or "many banners".
The Nihon shoki says that Emperor Ōjin was born at Kada in Tsukushi, in Kyūshū, in the year his mother, Empress Jingū, invaded the kingdom of Silla in Korea, and that the kami granted him the three kingdoms of Korea while he was still in the womb. When he was born there was flesh growing on his arm in the shape of a tomo, the leather guard an archer wears on the forearm against the stroke of the bowstring; his mother took it as the mark of a warrior and named him Homuda, because in antiquity the tomo was called homuda.
His cult began at Usa, in northern Kyūshū. The records of the Usa shrine tell that in 571 an old smith worked wonders by the pond of Hishikata; a man named Ōga no Higi prayed, and a child of three appeared standing on a bamboo leaf and declared that he was Yahata, the spirit of Emperor Ōjin. The Hachiman cult at Usa is said to have been established to atone for killing after 720, when many of the Hayato people of Kyūshū were killed, and Usa's festival of releasing living creatures comes from a Buddhist rite based on the ban on killing.
Then he came out of Kyūshū to the heart of the state by oracle. When the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji at Nara was being cast, the priestess of Usa, Ōga no Morime, travelled to the capital with an oracle from Hachiman that he would help make the statue, and in 749 he was given the highest rank among the kami. Late in the Nara period the monk Dōkyō sought the throne, and Wake no Kiyomaro received an oracle from Hachiman that forbade it, and Hachiman became the guardian of the imperial house. In 781 the court gave him the title of Great Bodhisattva, and he was portrayed as a Buddhist monk, and the joining of kami and Buddha went further in his cult than in any other. In 860 he was brought to Iwashimizu near the capital, Kyoto, and ranked just below Ise; later he and Amaterasu of Ise were called the "two mausoleums" of the imperial house.
From Iwashimizu he became the kami of the Minamoto, the warrior house descended from Emperor Seiwa. Minamoto no Yoshiie held his coming-of-age ceremony at his shrine and called himself Hachiman Tarō, Hachiman's eldest son, and the Minamoto founded the Tsurugaoka shrine at Kamakura. In the Middle Ages he became the kami of the whole warrior class, with a shrine on every estate, so that people said: "when you say kami, you mean Hachiman".
The idea his stories turn on is that a dead emperor became the kami of those who fight. He was born with the bow guard on his arm, a warrior before he fought, and after death he became the voice of the oracle that decided who sat on the throne, so that his stories belong to oracles and divination. He is also a kami who becomes a bodhisattva: one of the kami who helped build a Buddhist temple and took a Buddhist title, so that the warrior's weapon and the Buddhist ban on killing meet in him, hence Usa's festival of releasing living creatures. Warriors seek his help before battle, as Minamoto no Raikō swore an oath to him before setting out to kill the oni Shuten-dōji.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read this kami. The name 八幡 is read today Hachiman in the Chinese reading; its old Japanese reading is Yahata. It holds two words: ya, eight or many, a Japanese numeral we leave aside, and hata, in Old Japanese pata, a flag or banner. In Arabic it is fatḥ: Lane says that fatḥ is the conquest of a country, aid against an enemy, victory, and that fataḥa ʿalayhi is said of God when He gives a man victory over his enemy. The f becomes p as in the first of Khashim's laws, t is t, and ḥ falls as the guttural letters fall in the Juthoor tables. Yahata is then the many banners by which victory is sought, and Hachiman the kami of the warriors who carry them.
Linguistic Root
| Form | Source | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 八幡 Yahata, Hachiman | Japanese | eight or many banners |
| ya | Old Japanese | eight, many |
| pata, pada | Old Japanese | flag, banner |
| 誉田 Homuda | Nihon shoki | Ōjin's name, the archer's guard |
| tomo | Old Japanese | an archer's forearm guard |
| فتح, fatḥ | Arabic | conquest, victory, aid against an enemy |
The Old Japanese lexicon records pata and pada in the sense of flag and banner, and other words with the same letters: loom, fin, side and paddy field. It records tomo, the archer's forearm guard, and Homuta as a place name. Banner and loom belong to one field, since a banner is woven cloth.
The Arabic reading matches p with f, which is the first of Khashim's laws: Arabic f appears as f and p in the European languages; t matches t; and ḥ falls as the four guttural letters fall in most of what the Juthoor tables record. Every letter then keeps its place. The sense of the two words is not the same: the Japanese names the banner, the Arabic names conquest and victory. But a banner is raised for victory, and Hachiman is the kami of warriors.
The limit of the reading is that the Japanese letters pata carry other senses, that Japanese historians also derive the name from the Hata, a family of immigrants from the continent, or from an old district called Ayahata, and that banner and victory meet in use, not in the meaning of the word.
Key Mythic Narratives
Mother and son
At Usa a female kami called Hime-ōkami is worshipped with Hachiman, and Empress Jingū, Ōjin's mother. The Nipponica encyclopedia says that in the Heian period the Hachiman cult joined the cult of mother and child widespread in Kyūshū, so that the mother was prayed to for easy birth and for farming, and the cult flourished in the mountains of the Kunisaki peninsula. It is also told that the yamauba, the mountain woman, helped at the birth of Emperor Ōjin in the mountains.
The oracle at Usa
The Heibonsha concise encyclopedia quotes an oracle of Usa: "my land before other people's lands, my people before other people", meaning that he never fails to protect those who worship him.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Among the Romans, Mars is the god of war and the father of Romulus, founder of Rome, and so the ancestor of all Romans. Hachiman is the kami of war and the spirit of an emperor among the ancestors of the imperial house, and then became the kami of the Minamoto, who traced their descent to it. In both, the war god is an ancestor, and those descended from him fight in his name.
Indra, the thunderbolt warrior of the Rigveda, entered Buddhism as Śakra and came to Japan as Taishakuten, a guardian of Buddhism, and Nara-period statues of him survive in Tōdaiji itself. Hachiman, the Japanese war kami, also became a guardian of Buddhism, and helped cast the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji. The two war gods entered Buddhism by different doors and stood in the same temple.
In Egypt, Montu was the war god of the Theban kings, and four kings of the Eleventh Dynasty called themselves Mentuhotep, "Montu is satisfied". Minamoto no Yoshiie called himself Hachiman Tarō, Hachiman's son. In both, the king or commander carries the war god's name in his own.