According to the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki, the sun goddess Amaterasu, worshipped in Ise as the ancestress of the imperial family, has another name: Ōhirume or Grand Sun Goddess Augustness. The name Ōhirume also appears in the sacred texts (engi) recounting the origins of the Hachiman cult. In those texts, Ōhirume is described as the mother of Hachiman deity and the daughter of a Chinese king. According to the Hachiman engi texts, princess Ōhirume became pregnant when the rays of the morning sun shone on her chest; consequently, her name means the “wife of a sun god”. After a son was born, the king her father put the mother and the son into a boat and set it afloat on the ocean saying, “You will be a ruler of the place in which you land”. The boat reached the shore of Ōsumi province of Kyushu, where Japanese people began to worship the baby as Hachiman deity. Generations after, the prince Hachiman was reborn as Emperor Ōjin, the sixteenth sovereign of Japan.

In my talk I will examine in more detail the legends about Ōhirume that reflect the ancient beliefs of the Kyusyu and are linked to myth of the origin of Japanese imperial family line. I will focus on material of the Hachiman engi, such as “The history of the path to enlightenment of the [bodhisattva] Hachiman” (Hachiman go-inni engi, the 12th c.), “Admonition to the stupid children about Hachiman” (Hachiman gudōkin, the beginning of the 14th c.) etc.