Oracles and Offerings: The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Gods and Humans

Abstract

In the world of premodern Japanese literature, vernacular poetry was depicted as something capable of transcending the established boundaries of social status and nationality, a vehicle for crossing between different worlds. I would like here to briefly examine the role of vernacular poetry as a means of transcending the borders between gods and humans. On the one hand, the gods give messages to humans by means of oracular verses of vernacular poetry; on the other hand, humans seeks to please the gods by means of offerings of vernacular poetry. It is through these two special forms of presentation—oracles from the gods and offerings to the gods—that vernacular poetry succeeded in blurring the borders between the mundane and the divine. Tradition would have it that the first vernacular poem—that is, of the conventional type consisting of thirty-one syllables—was composed by a deity. According to the vernacular preface to Kokin wakashū 古今和歌集 (Poems ancient and modern, 905), the first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular poetry, this was a poem intoned by the god Susanoo スサノヲノミコト when marrying his new bride Kushiinada クシイナダヒメ in the land of Izumo (in modern-day Shimane, see Figure 1). Thus, avers the preface, began the tradition of thirty-one-syllable vernacular poetry. Since that event, it was not uncommon for gods to recite vernacular poetry, and, more especially, to reveal their intentions to us mortals by means of oracles of the same form. Such verses are known collectively as oracular poems. Let us take a look at the history of those oracular poems preserved in imperially commissioned anthologies of vernacular verse, focusing our attention on ways in which such poems allow the gods and humans to communicate with one another. The first imperially commissioned anthology of vernacular verse to contain oracular poetry was Shūi wakashū 拾遺和歌集 (Gleanings of vernacular verse, 1005), this being the third such anthology. In fascicle ten we find two oracular poems, one by the god at Sumiyoshi Shrine 住吉社 (Osaka), the other by the god presiding Oracles and Offerings: The Vernacular Poetry that Binds Gods and Humans