was a nineteenth-century Japanese farmer and religious leader. She is the primary figure of the Japanese new religion Tenrikyo. Tenrikyo followers, who refer to her as Oyasama (おやさま or 親様), believe that she was settled in the Shrine of Tsukihi from the moment she experienced a divine revelation in 1838 until her death in 1887. In Tenrikyo, she is also referred to as the .
Upon her divine revelation, she gave away most of her family's possessions and dismantled the family's house, thereby entering a state of poverty. She began to attract followers, who believed that she was a living goddess who could heal people and bless expectant mothers with safe childbirth. To leave a record of her teachings, she composed the Ofudesaki and taught the lyrics, choreography and music of the Service, which have become Tenrikyo's scripture and liturgy respectively. She identified what she claimed to be the place where God created human beings and instructed her followers to mark the place with a pillar and perform the liturgy around it, which she believed would advance humankind toward the salvific state of the Joyous Life. In the last several years of her life, she and her followers were arrested and detained a number of times by the Japanese authorities for forming a religious group without official authorization. A year after her death, Tenrikyo Church Headquarters received official authorization to be a church under the Shinto Main Bureau.
Tenrikyo doctrine maintains that Nakayama Miki was the fulfillment of God's promise to humankind at creation, which was that after a certain number of years had elapsed, God would be revealed through the soul of the mother of humankind at the place of creation and inform humankind of its origins, purpose, and means of salvation. Doctrine also maintains that as the Shrine of God, Nakayama's words and actions were in complete accordance with the divine will and that upon her death, her soul withdrew from physical existence and became everliving.
Biography Childhood Nakayama Miki, née Maegawa (前川), was born on 18 April 1798 (2 June) at dawn, around five o'clock in the morning. She was born in Sanmaiden Village (三昧田村), Yamabe County (山辺郡), Yamato Province (大和国), or present day Tenri, Nara, to a family of the farming class. Her father Maegawa Hanshichi was a member of the Tōdō clan and held the title of musokunin (無足人), a samurai-like status which entitled him to have a surname and carry a sword, though without stipend. He was also an ōjōya (大庄屋), a head of a group of local villages. Her mother, Kinu, was from the Nagao family (永尾家) of the same village and was said to have excelled in needlework.
In the first decade of her life, Miki learned how to write with a brush from her father and how to sew and spin cotton from her mother. From the ages of nine to eleven, she attended a private school for children at a nearby village, where she was educated in reading and writing. At home, she learned needlework from her mother and became proficient enough to make handicraft items and to cut garments out of wide bolts of cotton.
The Maegawas were pious adherents of the Pure Land school of Buddhism and belonged to a local temple called Zenpuku-ji (善福寺). In her childhood, Miki became familiar enough with Buddhist prayer so that by the age of twelve or thirteen, she was able to recite from memory various sutras as well the hymns from the Jōdo Wasan. At that time, she expressed an interest in becoming a nun. However, Miki's parents, on the suggestion of Miki's aunt, Kinu, asked her to marry Nakayama Zenbei (中山善兵衛), the son of Miki's aunt. At first, Miki hesitated to agree to the request out of her desire to become a nun, but eventually she consented, on the condition that even when married she would be allowed to continue her Buddhist prayer.
Marriage On 15 September 1810 (13 October), Miki took part in her bridal procession to the residence of the Nakayama family in the village of Shoyashiki (庄屋敷村). Dressed in a long-sleeved kimono, she was carried in a palanquin and was accompanied by attendants carrying a trousseau of five loads – two chests of drawers, two long chests, and a pair of boxes. The Nakayama family, like the Maegawa family, held some prestige in the local area. The custom in Shoyashiki was for the male head of the Nakayama household to inherit the post of toshiyori (年寄, village head), and in Miki's lifetime, her father-in-law Zenyemon, and later, her husband Zenbei served as toshiyori. In addition, the Nakayama family was a major landholder in the village.
In 1813, Miki's in-laws entrusted her with the management of all household affairs. The Life of Oyasama, Tenrikyo's biography of Miki, portrays her as a diligent and productive worker. According to its account she did every type of farm work except for the men's tasks of digging ditches and plowing rice fields, pulled more than half an acre of cotton a day, and wove fabrics twice as fast as the average woman.
In the spring of 1816, she completed a training course known as the Fivefold Transmission (五重相伝) at Zenpuku Temple (善福寺), her parish temple in Magata Village (勾田村, now a district of the city of Tenri). During the Fivefold Transmission, she attended lectures on the writings of Hōnen, meditated, underwent tonsure, and made a vow to repeat the nenbutsu for the remainder of her life. Those who enrolled in the Fivefold Transmission were initiated into the mysteries of the Pure Land sect and were considered to have reached the highest level of faith.
In June 1820, Nakayama Zenyemon, Miki's father-in-law, died at the age of sixty-two. In July 1821, Miki's first child, also named Zenyemon (later renamed Shūji 秀司) was born. Her first daughter Omasa and second daughter Oyasu were born in April 1825 and September 1827 respectively. In April 1828, Miki's mother-in-law Kinu, died.
The anecdotes from The Life of Oyasama depict Miki as a charitable and forgiving mother. When a man was caught stealing a bag of rice from the Nakayama family's storehouse, Miki allowed him to keep the rice instead of turning him in to the authorities. When the mothers in her village suffered from a lack of milk, she would offer to nurse their infants. In 1828, one of the infants she was nursing, a boy named Adachi Terunojo, contracted smallpox. To pray for his recovery, she underwent a hundred-day prayer, walking barefoot to the village shrine every day.
In 1830, Miki's second daughter Oyasu died. Her third daughter, Oharu, was born on 21 September 1831. Her fourth daughter, Otsune, was born on 7 November 1833 and died two years later in 1835. Her fifth daughter, Kokan, was born on 15 December 1837.
Revelation On 26 October 1837 (12 December in the Gregorian calendar), Nakayama Miki's eldest son, Shūji, felt an acute pain in his leg while sowing barley in the fields. A village doctor named Gensuke was summoned to treat the leg. When Shūji's condition did not improve, the family called for Nakatano Ichibei (中野市兵衛), a shugenja (ascetic monk) who was renowned in the area for his healing rituals. Ichibei offered prayers on three occasions, but after each time Shūji had only temporary relief before the pain returned. After Zenbei, Miki's husband, made another entreaty to Ichibei, he agreed to conduct an incantation (yosekaji), a ritual intended to invoke the Buddha's compassion. Over the course of a year, the incantation was conducted nine times.
When Miki and Zenbei had sudden physical pains on the evening of 23 October 1838, Zenbei sent a messenger to Ichibei, who on that day was visiting his relatives in Shoyashiki for a local festival. Ichibei held another incantation the following morning. However, as the woman who regularly served as his medium, Soyo, was not available, he asked Miki to serve as medium instead. In the middle of the incantation, Tenrikyo's doctrine asserts that Miki had her first divine revelation.
After the first revelation, Miki remained in a trance while the Nakayama family discussed how to respond to the request. Over three days, the family made several refusals, asking the divine presence to leave, but with each refusal Miki's trance grew in intensity and her responses became more severe. Then, at eight o'clock on the morning on 26 October 1838, Miki's husband Zenbei accepted the invitation on the family's behalf and her trance stopped. On this day, according to Tenrikyo's doctrine, Nakayama Miki was settled as the Shrine of Tsukihi and the Tenrikyo teachings were founded.
Poverty and ministry
For the three years or so following the revelation, Miki secluded herself in a storehouse. In the 1840s, Miki gradually gave away her personal belongings and the possessions of the Nakayama family. Then Miki requested that her husband Zenbei dismantle the main house, starting with the roof tiles at the southeast corner followed by the tiles on the northeast corner and the gable walls.
In 1848, she began to give sewing lessons at her home, and in 1852 her daughter Oharu was married to Kajimoto Sojirō (梶本惣治郎), the younger brother of one of the sewing students. Around this time, her son Shūji opened a classroom at home and began to instruct the village children in reading and writing.
On 22 February 1853, Miki's husband Zenbei died. In the same year, the dismantling of the Nakayama house was completed, and Miki sent her youngest daughter Kokan to Naniwa (in present-day Osaka) to chant the divine name, thus marking the first instance of missionary work in the Tenrikyo tradition.
In 1854, Miki began to administer the grant of safe childbirth (obiya-yurushi), first to her daughter Oharu during her pregnancy. After Oharu delivered the baby safely, expectant mothers who had heard about the grant visited the Nakayama residence and requested that the grant be administered to them as well. The grant, a form of faith healing, was conducted by stroking and breathing on the recipient's stomach three times. Recipients of the grant, Miki instructed, would be assured of a rapid and easy delivery and would not need to observe the postnatal customs of the day, such as wearing an abdominal band, not eating certain foods, or leaning against a support.
Scripture and liturgy
In 1864, Iburi Izō, a carpenter and a close disciple of Oyasama, constructed Tenrikyo's first house of worship, the .
From 1866 to 1875, Miki taught the Mikagura-uta, the songs of Tenrikyo's liturgy, the Service. The Mikagura-uta is divided into five sections; sections one, two and three are performed seated with hand movements while sections four and five are dances. Section one was composed first, in 1866, followed by section five from January to August 1867. In 1870, sections two and four were composed, followed by section three in 1875.
From 1869 to 1882, Miki composed what would later be called the Ofudesaki, a Tenrikyo scripture believed to contain her divine revelations. The Ofudesaki was written in the hiragana script and in the waka style of Japanese poetry, and has since been compiled into 1,711 verses divided into seventeen parts.
In 1874, Miki collected the kagura masks she had requested from her older brother Maegawa Kyosuke. The kagura masks would be used for the Kagura Service, a subset of the Service.
On 26 May 1875 (29 June), Miki located the Jiba, where she claimed was the spot where God created human beings. According to The Life of Oyasama, she identified the spot by walking randomly around the yard of her residence until her foot stopped. To confirm, she asked the other followers who were present to walk around blindfolded and their feet stopped at the same spot. She instructed her followers to mark this spot with a stand called the Kanrodai, or the stand of heavenly dew. Later that year, a wooden prototype of the Kanrodai, built by Iburi Izō two years earlier on Miki's request, was brought out of the storehouse of the Nakayama residence and placed on the Jiba.