Shōmonki: The Story of Masakado’s RebellionTranslated by Judith N. Rabinovitch
Monographs (1986) pp. 1–168
On the night of 14 May 1984, Taira no Masakado, d. 940, a deified rebel warrior, was restored to his status as a principal deity of the Kanda Shrine, (Kanda Myōjin) in Yushima, Tokyo. The courtly and dignified ceremony was attended by a thousand joyful parishioners wearing the old-fashioned dress of the Edo period, 1603-1868. This seldom-enacted Shinto rite brought to a close a period of 110 years during which the worship of Masakado, formerly a principal deity of Kanda Myōjin, had been relegated to a massha, or lesser shrine, within the precincts. This demotion of Masakado’s spirit followed the Meiji government’s official condemnation of that ancient warrior as ‘an enemy of the emperor’ in 1874, this act reversing a posthumous official pardon granted to Masakado in 1626.
1986. 168 pages.
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