Suwa ─ A Land Where Ancient Layers Continue to Accumulate | Earth Folklore Log #001

In Suwa, there is a god who has been worshipped since ancient times called Mishaguji.
However, its true nature is not well understood.

Some say it is a tree.
Some say it is a rock.
Some say it is a mountain.

It has no form, yet people have lived on this land while worshipping this invisible presence.
Why is such an elusive entity still cherished today?

That is, for me, the charm of Suwa, and at the same time, a sense of dissonance.

Carrying that vague feeling, I walked through various places.
Where do the stories that people create come from?
Every time I walked, my questions did not decrease; they only increased.

Why do different "stories" exist in every land?
Why do people seek "meaning" and continue to generate it?
Why can't people accept the world as a "world that just exists"?

At first, I thought the answer lay in folklore studies.
I read Kunio Yanagita's "The Legends of Tono," Shinichi Nakazawa's "The King of Spirits," and also read mythology and religious studies.

They were all interesting.

However, none of them were the answer I wanted to know.

What I wanted to know was not the meaning of myths, nor the correctness of history.
Why does Sapiens generate "stories"? Why must they?
It was that process itself.

Myths.
Nations.
Currency.
Social media.
Are these things, which differ so much in era and form, really separate?
They are all invisible "fictions".
They are "fictions" that cannot be touched by hand.
Yet, because people believe they "exist," "reality" continues to move.

One day, I saw a fault line in the land of Suwa. An iwakura (sacred rock) placed there.
One day, I saw how snowmelt water shaped the town in Kanazawa. A yorishiro (spirit vessel) by the water's edge.
One day, I saw a towering rocky mountain in Tochigi. A cliff Buddha carved into it.
At that moment, a hypothesis emerged.
"Stories" are not born only inside the human head.
Could they be born from the "space between" the Earth and Sapiens?

Faults create gods.
River water creates festivals.
Boundaries create yokai.
Networks create new communal stories.
The land is inducing "stories."

I created a framework called "Earth Folklore OS" to decipher this process by which Sapiens generates stories.

This Earth Folklore OS is organized as "seven layers" that stack up, starting from geology, water, and ecosystems, to stories, institutions, the body, and cognition.

This conceptual diagram is a hypothesis that organizes the process by which stories are born from the land into seven layers.

On top of the Earth-side layers of geology, water, and ecosystems, "stories" such as myths and rituals are born, eventually becoming institutions, experienced through the human body, and stacking up into the cognitive world.

In other words, "stories" are not in people's heads from the beginning. They are generated while traveling back and forth between the Earth and Sapiens.

Of course, I do not think this layer division is the only correct answer.
It is not a theory completed at a desk.
I travel, walk the land, observe, engage in dialogue, form hypotheses, and walk again.
Each time, this OS is also rewritten.

This series is also a record of verifying those hypotheses one by one.

So, where is the first verification site?
I chose Suwa without hesitation.
It is often said, "Ancient layers remain in Suwa."
Traces of Jomon.
Myths.
The state.
Festivals.
Indeed, they are layered in this land.
However, what I felt after walking around was something a little different.

Ancient layers are not things that were created in the past and remain as they are.
The Onbashira Festival still drags new trees every seven years, gathers new people, and
stacks up new memories.
Myths on top of Jomon.
The state on top of myths.
Modernity on top of the state.

And our own modern interpretations accumulate.
The ancient layers are still being updated even now.

I decided to call this phenomenon "Modern Ancient Layers."
Not relics of the past, but layers that continue to accumulate at this very moment.
Suwa was one of the lands where that activity is most visible.

As a place to boot up Earth Folklore OS for the first time,
I know of no land more suitable.

From next time, I will actually walk this land with Earth Folklore OS in hand.
Geology.
Water.
Ecology.
Stories.
Institutions.
Body.
Cognition.
Each layer does not exist independently.
They overlap within a single land, creating one Earth Folklore.

First, let's start the journey from the land where ancient layers are still accumulating──
Suwa.

← The starting point of this project is from this declaration