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Kono Tabi: A little-known Japanese Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Extract

In 1802 Kino, a middle-aged Japanese peasant woman in a remote country place, declared that God, having many times tried unsuccessfully to manifest himself in saints and prophets, had “this time” (kono tabi) managed at last to find in her a vehicle for the delivery of his full and final message. From 1802 till 1826 (the year of her death God, through his intermediary Kompira, who plays the part that the archangel Gabriel plays in the Koran), inspired this illiterate peasant with a continuous flow of communications, which from 1811 onwards were taken down in writing and are preserved in some 300 rolls. On the strength of this revelation she founded a sect that despite prosecution in the nineteenth century to-day numbers about 40,000 followers, and which, though its ways of life owe something to Buddhist monasticism, can only be described as a separate religion.

Type
Papers Contributed
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1933

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References

page 105 note 1 Sanskrit, Kumbhīra. A minor Indian deity, incorporated in the Buddhist pantheon.

page 106 note 1 I owe all my knowledge of the subject to Professor Anesaki, who sent me this pamphlet and put me into communication with the authorities of the sect. A very short summary of Dr. Ishibashi's work was printed in German in the Proceedings of the Imperial Academy,Tōkyo, 1933.Google Scholar

page 109 note 1 In 1858 the sect was suspected of being connected with Christianity and was temporarily suppressed. But this happened at a time of anti-European panic, and the fact that the sect was not recognizably either Buddhist or Shinto was enough at such a moment to bring it under suspicion.