Sarutahiko

Summary

Sarutahiko is a kami of the land in Japanese myth who stood at the eight crossroads of heaven when Ninigi, grandson of Amaterasu, was about to come down and rule the earth, shining up to the plain of heaven and down to the land. Ame-no-Uzume faced him and asked who he was, and he became Ninigi's guide on the way down; later he drowned when a shellfish caught his hand as he fished.

When Ōkuninushi had given up the land and Ninigi was ready to descend, a kami stood on his road in heaven whose light reached the plain of heaven above and the land below. The Nihon shoki gives the report of the scout sent ahead to clear the way: at the eight crossroads of heaven is a god whose nose is seven hands long and whose back is more than seven fathoms; light shines from his mouth and from his rear, and his eyes are like a great mirror glowing red like the winter cherry. None of the eighty myriad kami could face him and question him. Amaterasu and Takagi told Uzume: you are a delicate woman, but you are the kami who prevails over whoever faces her; go and ask: who is it that stands on the road by which our child is to descend? Uzume bared her breasts, pushed her band below her navel and stood before him laughing in mockery. He asked her: why do you do this? She asked him: who are you that stand in the road of Amaterasu's child? He said: I am Sarutahiko, a kami of the land; I heard that the child of the heavenly kami was coming down, and I have come to meet him and go before him as his guide. She asked: will you go before me, or shall I go before you? He said: I will go before. She asked: where will you go, and where will the Grandchild go? He said: the child of heaven will go to the peak of Kushifuru at Takachiho in Tsukushi, and I will go to the upper waters of the river Isuzu at Sanada in Ise; you who discovered me must escort me.

Ninigi came down at Takachiho, Sarutahiko went to the upper Isuzu, and Uzume went with him. Ninigi told Uzume to take the name of the kami she had discovered, and so her line were called the Sarume; the Kojiki says their women bore the name of the male kami Sarutahiko. Then the Kojiki tells his death. He was living at Azaka; he went out fishing, a hirabu shellfish closed on his hand, and he drowned in the brine of the sea. When he sank to the bottom he was called the Bottom-Touching Spirit, when the water gurgled up the Gurgling-Up Spirit, and when the bubbles formed the Bubble-Bursting Spirit.

The idea the story turns on is that the one who stands in the road is the one who shows the way. Sarutahiko stood at the crossing between heaven and earth, lighting both, and no one dared question him until Uzume faced him with laughter; once questioned he gave his name, the barrier became a guide, and heaven's line went down to the earth, while he went to a place in Ise that later became the site of Amaterasu's great shrine. Then the guide of the roads of heaven came to a small death in the sea: a shellfish holds his hand, the water swallows him, and each stage of his drowning gets a name.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay reads it. The Kojiki writes it 猿田毘古神, Saruta-biko-no-kami. We remove kami, and biko, "prince" or "man", and saruta remains. We read it from Arabic sirāṭ: s is s, r is r, and ṭ becomes t because Japanese has no emphatic sounds, as it does in the reading of Amaterasu from amṭara. Lane gives "ṣirāṭ: a road, or way; sirāṭ, with s, is the original", and under s-r-ṭ: "sariṭa: he swallowed it" and "sirāṭ: a road, so called because he who goes away on it disappears like food that is swallowed". On this reading Sarutahiko is the master of the road: the kami who stood on the road of the descent between heaven and earth and showed the way, and whom the sea swallowed at Azaka.

Linguistic Root

The Kojiki writes saru with the sign for monkey, 猿, and ta with the sign for field, 田, which is why Chamberlain renders the name "monkey field". The Kokugakuin database says the meaning of saruta is unknown and gathers scholars' explanations: saruda from sarudo, "jester", making him and the Sarume performers of dance and mime; the sacred rice field; a field guarded by the monkey; or a place name in Ise, Sanada, where he went. Hirata reads the name Sada, a place name.

Lane gives, under ṣ-r-ṭ: "ṣirāṭ: a road, or way; sirāṭ, with s, is the original, and zirāṭ a dialect form"; under s-r-ṭ: "sariṭa and istaraṭa: he swallowed it", and "sirāṭ: a road, or a conspicuous road, so called because he who goes away on it disappears like food that is swallowed". The sound match: s is s, r is r, and ṭ is t, three letters in order, with Japanese vowels. The reading meets his other name in the Nihon shoki, the kami of the crossroads. The Sarume, Uzume's line, carry only saru from his name, which on our reading is Arabic sāra, from s-y-r: a man sāra when he went and journeyed on; and according to the Kokugakuin database the Sarume walked ahead of the procession of the enthronement festival, clearing the way, as Sarutahiko walked before Ninigi. What remains against the reading is that saru is a living Japanese word for monkey, and that the Sarume taking saru alone may mean that ta is a separate word, "field", leaving ṭ with nothing to answer.

Key Mythic Narratives

Sarutahiko and Ise

The Kogo shūi says that Amaterasu's great shrine was founded in the reign of Suinin on the upper Isuzu, and gives as its reason that the kami of the crossroads had come down to that place in the age of the gods; scholars take this as making him the forerunner and first settler of the shrine's land. The Kōtaijingū gishikichō, of the early Heian period, says that Ōta-no-mikoto, ancestor of the Uji-tsuchigimi family, showed Princess Yamatohime the upper Isuzu as the site for Amaterasu's shrine, and a Kamakura-period book makes Ōta a descendant of Sarutahiko. Azaka, where he drowned, is a place in Ise, with a shrine listed in the Engi register of shrines. For these reasons some scholars hold that he was first the kami of the people of Ise, or of its fishermen.

The face and the nose

Scholars connect the Nihon shoki's description of his long nose and red eyes with the tengu and with the high-nosed masks of gigaku dance; some take the description as that of a monkey, since the monkey was held to be the sun's messenger, rejoicing at its rising, so that his welcome of the sun's descendant would belong to this belief. Aston notes that in later times he became a phallic deity.

Symbolic Reading

The Japanese rereading essay in this project reads the cave and the descent politically: Amaterasu is the ancestor of the ruling house, and the return of light is the return of rule. The essay does not mention Sarutahiko, but the Kokugakuin database records two scholarly readings close to its own: that his naming himself and welcoming heaven's child tell of the submission to the ruling house of the people of the land who worshipped him, and the yielding of their land in Ise, and that his drowning at Azaka is the origin of a rite of submission by the fishermen of Ise. The database also notes that some see him as a boundary kami who repels intruders with his red eyes, and others as a kami who goes ahead and guides. In the story itself the two come together: he is the barrier no one dared approach, and then the guide who walked before the procession.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Hermes among the Greeks is the guide of travellers and leader of souls, who crosses the boundaries where others stop and brings those who walk with him safely across. Sarutahiko stands at the border between heaven and earth and walks before heaven's line until it reaches the land. They part in that Hermes is a messenger from the house of the gods, while Sarutahiko is a kami of the land who came to welcome the one descending. In the northern myths Heimdall lives at the end of the bridge that joins the gods' world to the world of humans, guarding it and seeing what no one else sees. Sarutahiko too stands where the road between the two worlds meets, lighting above and below, but he opens the road for the one descending once he is questioned, while Heimdall guards it against attackers.

Uzume facing him with laughter and a bared body, and the Sarume walking afterwards at the head of the festival procession, are pictures of matsuri. Among the kami he is one of the kami of the land who welcomed heaven's line.