The shintai of Hachiman may be a pillow, a fly-brush, an arm-rest, or a white stone. He is also credited with giving instructions for the celebration of an annual festival for the release of living things, which is, of course, a humanitarian Buddhist institution, wholly foreign to the rôle of a Japanese War-God. In several of these he calls himself Bosatsu (Bodhisattwa), which is a Buddhist term something like our saint. The numerous inspired utterances ascribed to him are thoroughly Buddhist in character. But his cult is deeply tinctured with Buddhism. His Shinto quality is recognized in various ways, notably by the erection of the distinctive Shinto gateways known as torii, before his shrines. In 1039 he was given a high place in the State religion. In Seiwa's reign (859-880) a temple was erected to him at Ihashimidzu near Kiôto, where he received Imperial presents, and even visits. Minamoto family carried with it that of the God who had been so useful to them. Forty years later Kiyomaro, the founder of the great Minamoto family, made use of his oracles to thwart the ambitious projects of a priest named Dôkiô, the Wolsey of Japanese history. Hachiman seems to have first come into notice in 720, when he rendered efficient assistance in repelling a descent of Koreans on Japan. The original seat of this cult was Usa, in the province of Buzen, an old Shinto centre. There is no mention of his worship in the Kojiki or Nihongi, and the legends which carry it back to A.D.
The ultimate authority for this statement is an oracle of the God himself delivered hundreds of years after Ôjin's death.
Tradition which makes him identical with the very legendary Mikado Ôjin. His origin is really unknown, but he is placed provisionally among deified human beings in accordance with the accepted Hachiman.-The War-God Hachiman is one of the most conspicuous of the later Shinto deities. This festival is called the mihashira-matsuri or "festival of the august pillars." It is so called because instead of a shrine there is only a plot of ground containing a "rock-cave" with a great wooden post at each of the four corners. He takes no active part in the ceremonies of the annual festival, but sits on a chair in the middle of the sacred plot of ground and receives the obeisances of the people.
At every change of office the newly appointed high priest formerly received a cap of honour and robes from the Palace of Kiôto. He never leaves the neighbourhood, and takes precedence of the chief local official. An oracle of the God is quoted to this effect: "I have no body, the hafuri is my body." His house is called the shinden or divine dwelling. The inhabitants hold that the God is the Oho-hafuri, and that the Oho-hafuri is the God. Tradition says that the present Oho-hafuri, or chief priests of Suha, are direct descendants of this deity. He was a son of Ohonamochi, who, after his father's submission, refused allegiance to the Sun-Goddess and fled to Suha, where he was obliged to surrender, his life being spared. This God is not mentioned in the Nikongi, but his legend is given in the Kojiki and Kiujiki. Take-minakata, the deity of Suha in Shinano, may be a real ancestral deity. None of the Dii majores of the more ancient Shinto are deified individual men, and although it is highly probable that some of the inferior mythical personages were originally human beings, I am unable to point to a case of this kind which rests on anything more than conjecture.
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