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詳細表示 (Complete Article)

カテゴリー1： 2. Kami (Deities)
カテゴリー2： Kami in Classic Texts
Title
Ōnaobi, Kamunaobi
Text [Ōnaobi no kami.Kamunaobi no kami] (Kojiki)
Kami which came into being in the process of Izanagi's lustration at a river mouth in Awakihara of Tachibana, Hyūga, in Tsukushi Province (present-day Kyushu) following his return from the underworld of Yomi.

When Izanagi bathed in the middle current of the river, the first kami to appear were produced from the pollution of Yomi which had adhered to his body. Those were the two kami of disorder, Yasomagatsuhi and Ōmagatsuhi. Next, the kami Ōnaobi and Kamunaobi appeared in order to rectify the disorder (magagoto) represented by the previous two kami. Nothing else is said of the doings of these two kami, however. The name Ōnaobi is composed of the honorific "Ō" ("great") followed by nao, meaning the rectification or re-ordering of something which has been disordered, together with the suffix bi, interpreted variously as the same bi of the word kunbi (spirit), or merely as an expression of the ren'yō form of the old verb naobu, to "correct."

Kojiki notes that Izanagi's lustration in the "middle current" resulted in the production of two kami of disorder, together with three kami that rectified that disorder, namely Ōnaobi, Kamunaobi, and Izunome no kami. According to the sixth "alternate writing" of the fifth story cycle related by Nihongi, on the other hand, the three kami produced were Yasomagatsuhi, Kamunaobi and Ōnaobi. This difference may have been the result of the desire to add Ōnaobi in order to produce a "sacred three." Further, in Nihongi's tenth "alternate writing" relating the same episode, Ōnaobi is listed as the only one of the above three kami to have been produced as Izanagi came out the water of ablution. The folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu believed that the two kami of rectification were in fact mere variations of the same kami, with two being produced as the result of literary parallelism. In any event, naobi can be considered the spiritual energy that "rectifies" disorder, transforming it into blessing.

-Kobori Keiko

Pronunciation in Japanese/用語音声

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