Who Is Hachiman? Usa, Emperor Ojin and the Warrior Guardian

Open the chapter on Emperor Ojin in the Nihon Shoki and you will not find a war god. You will find a ruler born in Tsukushi in the year his mother campaigned against Silla, with a growth on his arm shaped like an elbow-pad. The name Hachiman appears only in a translator's footnote, which says Ojin was deified long afterward.

That quiet gap is the key to this kami. Hachiman is now honored at shrines that, according to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, are said to number more than 40,000, and the common label is "god of war." The records tell a longer story, one that begins with an oracle in northern Kyushu and runs through a Buddhist title and a clan of warriors.

A kami the chronicles do not name

The Nihon Shoki, finished in 720, tells Ojin's life in its tenth book. Aston's 1896 translation says he was the fourth child of Emperor Chuai, born at Kata in Tsukushi, and died at 110. A footnote to that line adds that the Kojiki gives 130, and that Ojin was made a god at a later time under the name Yahata or Hachiman, as a god of war. That is a nineteenth-century editor's gloss, not the chronicle's voice. We did not find the name in the main text of that book.

Kokugakuin University's Basic Terms of Shinto defines Hachiman as generally meaning the deified Ojin together with his mother, Empress Jingu, and his wife Himegami. They were first enshrined at Usa Hachimangu in what is now Oita Prefecture. The identification of the kami with Ojin comes through later records, and the sources we read do not say when it first appears.

The oracle that reached the capital

The cult began at Usa. Kokugakuin's encyclopedia notes that Usa and five other Hachiman shrines in Kyushu show the faith grew there in ancient times. When the Great Buddha of Todaiji was being built, the shrine priestess of Usa, Oga no Ason Morime, traveled to the capital and received a message from Hachiman: the kami would help with the work.

Another oracle shaped how the court saw the kami. In the late Nara period, Wake no Kiyomaro received one that blocked the monk Dokyo's scheme to take the throne. The encyclopedia says this strengthened Hachiman's character as a guardian of the imperial house. By the end of the eleventh century, Hachiman and Ise were being called the "Two Imperial Mausoleums." Ise is the shrine of Amaterasu.

A kami with a Buddhist title

Because Usa sat close to the continent, the encyclopedia says kami-and-Buddha blending developed there early. In 781 the court gave the kami the title Daibosatsu, a Buddhist rank, and images were made showing him as a monk. At Iwashimizu the Buddha assigned to him as his true nature was Amida.

The Basic Terms of Shinto explains the logic. Under the honji-suijaku theory, a Buddha is the original nature, and a kami is its trace in the world. Many Hachiman shrines became guardian shrines of temples, among them Daianji, Todaiji, Yakushiji and Toji. The Hojoe festival comes from a Buddhist rite of releasing living creatures. Toji appears in the story of Inari too.

Warriors and the Minamoto

The warrior side came later. According to the encyclopedia, Hachiman became the clan kami of the Genji, the Minamoto line. Minamoto no Yoshiie held his coming-of-age rite at Iwashimizu and called himself Hachiman Taro. At the end of the Heian period a shrine was founded in Kamakura, and in the medieval period Hachiman grew from a clan kami into the guardian of the warrior class, with shrines set up on estates in many regions.

Tsurugaoka Hachimangu's own account says Yoriyoshi, Yoritomo's ancestor, brought a division of the kami from Iwashimizu to Kamakura. In 1180 Yoritomo moved the shrine to its present location and made it the guardian of the shogunate. The shrine enshrines three kami: Ojin, Jingu and Himegami. Its festivals include the Hojoe and a horseback archery ritual, still held at the September festival. The shrine calls Hachiman a deity of good fortune in warfare.

How to read a claim about Hachiman

Three questions help:

• Which Hachiman? Usa, Iwashimizu and Tsurugaoka each have their own history. Tsurugaoka was founded from Iwashimizu, which in turn came from Usa.
• Which layer? A chronicle, an oracle, a Buddhist title or a clan role. They come from different centuries.
• Who calls him a "god of war"? Aston's 1896 footnote does. The Kokugakuin account shows oracles, imperial protection and Buddhist ties first, and warriors later.

A worked example: the Metropolitan Museum holds an eighteenth-century steel breastplate by Myochin Morisuke, titled as depicting the character Hachiman, "God of War." It shows the name in use on warrior equipment in that century. It does not tell you what the Nara-period oracle meant.

Common mistakes and mix-ups

• "Hachiman is in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as a war god." In Aston's translation the name appears only in a footnote to Ojin's chapter.
• "Hachiman was always for warriors." The encyclopedia puts the warrior role after the oracle, the Buddhist title and the imperial link.
• "Hachiman and Ojin are simply the same." The glossary says Hachiman generally means Ojin with Jingu and Himegami.
• "There are exactly 40,000 shrines." Tsurugaoka says it is said that there are more than that. We found no independent count.
• "Daibosatsu makes him a Buddha." It is a court-granted title for a kami, and the shrines remain Shinto.