Skip to content

New Book: Bungo and Hizen Fudoki

I have just put my latest collection of two past Patreon essays up for sale on Amazon: Myths from the Bungo & Hizen Fudoki. These two Fudoki do survive as independent works, rather than as quotations in other texts, but they look as though they have been severely edited. The remaining parts of the Bungo-no-Kuni Fudoki are remarkable for how little they say explicitly about jinja or kami, which means that there is substantially more material from the Hizen-no-Kuni Fudoki in this collection.

Both of these regions are in Kyushu, the southernmost of the main islands of Japan, but the content nevertheless shows a lot in common with myths from other regions. That said, the different areas are still distinctive, and these Fudoki are notable for saying a lot about the “tsuchigumo”, who appear to be a different culture of human beings in this text, although they seem to be non-human spirits in others. Since an ancient Tennō is depicted as conquering them, it is tempting to see this as a mythologisation of colonialism, but things are not quite that simple.

In any case, if you are interested in more obscure Shinto myths and stories from the regions of Japan, please take a look.

Tags:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.