A Magnificent Empress, A Brilliant Old Man, and an Ugly Navigator: The Uncanny Bodies of Maritime Deities in Narratives of Empress Jingū

Abstract

Although the legend of Empress Jingū and her divinely mandated conquest of the Korean peninsula first appeared in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, narratives of Empress Jingū proliferated in the fourteenth century. Following the Mongol Invasions, shifts in worldview, particularly regarding Japan’s relationship with the Asian continent, contributed to changes in how kami were conceptualized. In late medieval Jingū narratives, the kami who assist Empress Jingū take corporeal forms and become active agents in the human world. Drawing on Ernst Jentsch, Motoori Norinaga, and Rudolph Otto, I argue that these kami inhabit uncanny bodies: their physical forms appear human, but contain uncanny attributes that reveal their divinity to observant humans within the narrative. From Jingū in suprahuman form, Sumiyoshi as an old yet incredibly strong man, and Azumi no Isora’s barnacle-encrusted face, I illustrate how uncanny aspects of the physical bodies of kami signify their divine nature.