Why Do the Emperors Offer 'Rice and Millet'?—The Rejected Essay for the Ruikotsu Prize, 'What Was the Emperor?' 4 (July 21, 2019)

Japanese rice is a cultivated species and a naturalized plant. There is no rice native to the Japanese archipelago. This is different from millet, which is a grain whose wild ancestor is green foxtail.

According to the 'Dual Origin Theory of Japanese Rice' by plant geneticist Yo-Ichiro Sato, Japanese rice has two genetic origins. One is explained as tropical japonica, which is upland-rice-like and was transmitted from the islands of Southeast Asia, and the other is temperate japonica, which is paddy-rice-like and originated in the Yangtze River basin in China.

Interestingly, both strains of rice are originally late-maturing and do not ripen in regions like the Tohoku region, where autumn cooling comes early. However, when the two crossbreed, early-maturing varieties strangely emerge. Sato infers that the two strains of rice naturally crossbred on the Japanese archipelago, resulting in the emergence of early-maturing varieties, which allowed rice cultivation to spread northward to northern Japan in an instant ('The Path Rice Traveled', 1992, etc.).

By 2,000 years ago, rice cultivation had advanced north to the cold region of Aomori. This was because Japan's early-maturing rice had been born.

Just like the creation myth where the two deities Izanagi and Izanami marry by learning from a wagtail and the nation is born, the history of following natural laws to unite different things and create new value is not limited to rice. The rice cultivation origin myth is the same.

The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki depict two rice cultivation origin myths. One is a type where the seeds of the five grains are obtained from the corpse of a goddess, and the other is the divine decree of the rice ears of the sacred garden, where Amaterasu Omikami bestows rice ears upon the descent of the heavenly grandson.

According to mythologist Taryo Obayashi, these two myths have different lineages.

The corpse-metamorphosis myth, in which crops appear from the corpse of a goddess, seems to be distributed over a very wide area. Within this, it is inferred that Japanese mythology belongs to the culture of slash-and-burn agriculture that cultivates millets, and its origin lies from northern continental Southeast Asia to South China, and it was transmitted from the Jiangnan region of China to the western Japan region at the end of the Jomon period ('Mythology of Rice Cultivation', 'Kingship Mythology of East Asia', etc.).

In fact, everything that appears in this myth is a slash-and-burn crop. Rice seems to be an exception, but there is also upland rice cultivated in slash-and-burn fields. This was precisely tropical japonica. It is also said that Ukemochi, the protagonist of the corpse-metamorphosis myth, was a goddess of millet.

Another interesting aspect of the rice cultivation origin myth is that it is told along with the descent of the heavenly grandson, the story of the origin of the Imperial Family. While the aforementioned myth states that the five grains originated in the Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, in this story, rice is brought from Takamagahara.

The heavenly descent myth, in which a heavenly deity sends their child or grandchild down to a mountain as a ruler on earth, is famous for the Dangun myth of Korea, but it is not limited to Korea. It is also similar to Mongolian traditions and Greek mythology. Obayashi states that there is a possibility that the mythology of the Indo-European language family was transmitted to Japan via the Korean Peninsula, mediated by the Altaic language family.

However, what the mother goddess bestows in Korean and Greek myths is wheat, not rice. If so, where did the rice element come from? Obayashi explains that the motif of being bestowed rice ears by Amaterasu Omikami is originally unrelated to the heavenly descent myth and is connected to the rice cultivation culture of Southeast Asia.

Obayashi infers that the heavenly descent myth, which belongs to the Altaic nomadic culture connected from Korea to inland Asia, and the rice cultivation myth, which is connected to Southeast Asia, came into contact and fused to create the myth of the descent of the heavenly grandson.

Just like the establishment of Japan's early-maturing rice, the Japanese rice cultivation origin myth is explained as a fusion of continental and southern elements.

The formation of the Japanese people is also the same. Anthropologist Kazuro Hanihara explains that the indigenous Jomon people and the immigrant Yayoi people interbred and assimilated to form the 'mainland Japanese'. Hanihara points out that interbreeding and assimilation are still ongoing ('Formation of the Japanese People and Japanese Culture', 1993).

If so, how should we think about the Shinto rituals of rice and millet performed by the Emperor?

In ancient Japan, there were various clans, and each had its own way of life. Each had its own gods and its own faith. There were indigenous slash-and-burn farmers, and there were newcomer paddy rice farmers. As the ruler who integrates the nation and the people into one, did the Emperor not choose to pray to the various gods that each person believes in, rather than worshipping only the imperial ancestral gods? Is it not possible that our ancestors chose to have such a master of ceremonies as their ruler?

As a result, have successive Emperors not come to perform value-pluralistic composite rituals every year during the harvest in autumn, and on a large scale during the change of reign, to reaffirm the peaceful significance of national integration? That can be called wisdom for peaceful coexistence. If one looks at the tragedies of conflicts stemming from religious differences that frequently occur around the world today, that meaning is easily understood. (To be continued)