Sukunabikona

Summary

Sukunabikona is a kami of tiny size in Japanese myth, the partner of Ōkuninushi in making the land and making it firm. The Kojiki tells that Ōkuninushi was at Cape Miho in Izumo when there came over the crest of the waves a boat made from the pod of a kagami plant, carrying a kami dressed in the skin of a goose flayed whole. Asked his name, he did not answer, and the kami with Ōkuninushi did not know him. The toad said: Kuebiko will know, the scarecrow of the mountain fields, who cannot walk on his legs but knows everything under heaven. Kuebiko said: this is Sukunabikona, the child of Kamimusubi. When Kamimusubi was asked, the answer came: he is truly my child, the one who slipped through between my fingers; be brothers, and make this land and make it firm. They made it together, and then Sukunabikona crossed over to the Everlasting Land, Tokoyo.

The Nihon shoki tells the arrival differently. Ōnamuchi, that is Ōkuninushi, was eating and drinking on a beach in Izumo when he heard a human voice from the surface of the sea but saw no one. Then a dwarf appeared, who had made his boat from the rind of a kagami and his clothes from wren's feathers. Ōnamuchi took him up on his palm to play with him, and the dwarf leapt up and bit his cheek. Heaven was told, and Takamimusubi said: my children number fifteen hundred; one of them was wicked and would not obey, and slipped through my fingers and fell; love him and rear him. The book says the two made the world with united strength and one heart, laid down for people and beasts the methods of healing diseases, and established means against the harm done by birds, beasts and creeping things, from which people still benefit. Ōnamuchi asked his partner: may we not say that the land we have made is well made? He answered: in some places it is complete, in others not. Then Sukunabikona went to Cape Kumano and from there to the Everlasting Land; in another version he went to the island of Awa, climbed a millet stalk, and was flung by its spring to the Everlasting Land.

In the Kojiki the Empress Jingū offers wine to her son and sings: this wine is not my wine; it was brought in congratulation by the Small August Deity who dwells for ever, firmly standing; drink, and not sparingly. So the kami who came from the sea is also the lord of wine.

The idea the story turns on is that the land is not made by the great one alone. Ōkuninushi is the Master of the Great Land, and his partner is too small to be seen, carried on a palm and slipping through fingers as a grain does, and yet through him the work of medicine, crops and wine was done. He leaves before the land is finished, and his companion asks: how can I make it alone? The small one's work remains in the land, in healing, grain and wine, and he himself remains in the Everlasting Land beyond the sea.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay reads it. It is written 少名毘古那, Sukuna-biko-na. We remove biko, "man" or "child of the sun", and na, a word of honour and affection. What remains is sukuna, which in Japanese means small or younger, the opposite of oho, "great", at the head of Ōnamuchi's name. We read it from Arabic s-k-n: s is s, k is k, n is n, in that order, the vowels being Japanese. From this root comes miskīn, which Lane gives as lowliness, weakness and paucity of property, saying it comes from sukūn, stillness; and from it sakana al-dam wa-l-damʿ, the blood and the tears stopped flowing, and sākin, allayed, assuaged. On this reading Sukunabikona is the small one with little beside the great one, and the one who stills illness and stops blood, which is what the story makes him: a dwarf on a palm, and then the first to lay down methods of healing.

Linguistic Root

The Kokugakuin database says that sukuna is the counterpart of oho, "great", as in the names of two brothers among Emperor Kōgen's sons, Ōbiko, the great man, and Sukuna-hiko, the little man. Some read it as small in body because the books make him a dwarf; others say the word's actual use does not fit that and prefer "younger", making the name the young child of the sun. Biko is "man" or "child of the sun", and na is an honorific, though some take it as "land" and read the name as lord of the land. Aston notes that sukuna means "few" in modern Japanese.

Lane gives, under s-k-n: "miskīn: lowliness, humility or submissiveness, weakness, and paucity of property; from al-sukūn", "sakana al-damʿ wa-l-dam: the tears and the blood stopped", and "sākin: still, calm, becoming appeased or allayed or assuaged". The sound match is straight: the s, k and n of the root are the s, k and n of sukuna in the same order, the two u-vowels between them are Japanese, and the final a closes the Japanese word. The sense meets the Japanese name in smallness and paucity, and the story in stilling and healing. What remains against the reading is that sukuna is a living Japanese word with its own family, and that miskīn reaches "small" by way of lowliness and having little, not by smallness of body.

Key Mythic Narratives

The Kokugakuin database gathers what survives of him outside the two chronicles. In the fudoki his name is joined to Ōnamuchi's as if they were one god, and he is said to have carried seeds of rice and millet to the provinces and, with his companion, to have begun the methods of healing and of cures at hot springs. The Hōki fudoki has him flung by the millet stalk to the Everlasting Land. He is also worshipped in stones: in Noto there is a shrine to a stone in his image, and a chronicle for the year 856 records that strange stones appeared on the shore of Ōarai in Hitachi and that Ōnamuchi and Sukunabikona appeared with them. The Kojiki does not say he came from the Everlasting Land, only that he came on the waves, so some scholars make him come down from heaven, since he is Kamimusubi's child.

After he leaves, Ōkuninushi laments: how can I make this land alone? A light shines over the sea, and a kami comes and says: if you worship me well, I will make it with you, and asks to be worshipped on the eastern mountain in Yamato, becoming the kami of Mount Mimoro.

Symbolic Reading

The project's two essays do not read Sukunabikona. Most scholars, as the Kokugakuin database gathers them, read him as a spirit of grain, millet above all: a child who slipped through the fingers as a grain does, flung by the spring of a millet stalk, carrying seed to the provinces. Some see in him the figure of a "lord of the land" who opens ground for planting before rice farming. On this reading what people need from the land once it is made comes together in one figure: grain to sow, medicine for people and beasts, and wine offered at the festival.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In China Shennong tastes the plants until he knows medicine from poison and teaches people to farm, and Sukunabikona lays down methods of healing with his companion and carries seed. In the Levant healing was sought from the Phoenician Eshmun. What these share is that medicine and grain come from one figure; Sukunabikona differs in his tiny size, his coming from the sea and his return across it. With Ōkuninushi he is one of the culture heroes through whose hands farming and healing come.

A child set adrift on the water in a small boat is a story the Near East also knows. In his note on the Nihon shoki Aston records that Hirata tried to identify the leech-child, the first child of Izanagi and Izanami, who was put in a reed boat and sent adrift, with Sukunabikona himself, an identification Aston did not find convincing; he then compares the reed boat with the Akkadian legend of Sargon in his ark of rushes and with Moses as an infant.