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カテゴリー1： 2. Kami (Deities)
カテゴリー2： Kami in Folk Religion
Title
Sakainokami
Text [Sakai no kami]
"kami of the border," a tutelary enshrined at the boundaries of settlements, and meant to prevent the ingress of evil spirits and kami of pestilence believed responsible for bringing plagues or other disasters to the community.

Archeological excavations of areas bordering Yayoi-period communities have produced human representations (katashiro) in both wood and stone, as well as wooden figures representing birds. For example, the Yunobe excavation in Shiga Prefecture has produced a pair of large and small wooden images believed to represent man and woman, while wooden human and bird figurines have been found together at the Yamaga site in Osaka. These figures were discovered in the rectangular trenches and moats surrounding settlements, and in other waterways which formed the borders of the communities. Archaeologists speculate that the Yunobe images represent ancestral spirits (sorei) and the birds believed to bear those spirits, while the Yamaga figures represent images used within communal rites, including ancestral spirits and the heron, the bird believed to bear the spirit of the grain. These images closely resemble the paired male and female images and "bird poles" still found today at the borders of Korean villages. Located at sites on the periphery of their respective communites, these images are believed to represent border deities imported from Korea together with rice agriculture.

According to Kojiki and Nihongi, when Izanagi was chased by Izanami from the underworld of Yomi, he arrived at the "even pass of Yomi" and there blocked the road to the pass with a huge boulder. Then, saying "come no further," Izanagi threw down his staff, which was transformed into a border deity called Funado no kami (alt. Kunato no sae no kami or Tsukitatsu Funato no kami). This Funado no kami was enshrined at village borders, road intersections, the roads over hills, and mountain passes, as a tutelary preventing the incursion of evil spirits. In the Engishiki's norito litany called "Feasting of the Roads" (Michiae no matsuri), the three kami Yachimatahiko, Yachimatahime and Kunado are addressed with the words, "that you mingle not with, nor speak in concert with those awful, disorderly things that issue from the underworld, the bottom land. Against the things that go below, stand guard; against the things that go above, stand guard. That you guard the night, that you stand guard over the day, thus we offer our blessings."

In the ancient period, a male-female pair of kami images was erected together with an image of Kunado no kami at each of the roads demarcating the four corners of the capital city. The Honchō seiki compiled in the mid-Heian period also notes the use of paired wooden images of sakai no kami which were engraved with female and male sexual features.

In addition to Funado no kami, Kunado no kami, and Sae no kami, the cult of the border deity also coalesed with the popular Buddhist cult of Jizō, a bodhisattva believed to assist travelers on the road from this world to the next; as a result, images of Jizō became generally popularized as deities of the border. See also dōsojin.

-Kawamura Kunimitsu

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Sacred straw rope marking the boundary of a village_Fujii Hiroaki___2001****_Saitama Prefecture