The handover of the country is not a single moment. The Kojiki tells it in two acts. The first act is at Inasa-no-Hama, where Takemikazuchi plants his sword in the sand and demands that Okuninushi yield. The second act is here, at Miho, on the eastern tip of the Shimane Peninsula, where the question is put to Okuninushi’s son.
The son who was fishing
Okuninushi, faced with the heavenly demand, replies that he cannot decide alone. “Ask my sons,” he says. The messenger Ame-no-Tori-fune travels east along the peninsula to where the eldest, Kotoshironushi, is fishing. Kotoshironushi is the god of speech, of pronouncements, of the spoken word. His agreement, in the cosmology of the text, carries weight.
The messenger arrives. He explains the situation. Kotoshironushi listens. And then he gives his answer in a single action: he turns his fishing boat upside down on the water, climbs onto the underside, and disappears into silence. Some readings call this a self-imposed death. Others call it acceptance — the giving up of speech by the god of speech. The boat, inverted, becomes a shrine.
Miho Jinja is built on the spot.
The hall and the ritual
The current shrine — its main hall built in the unusual Miho-zukuri style, a double honden side by side — sits at the very edge of the village, looking out across the Miho Strait toward the Sea of Japan. The architecture is unusual because the shrine enshrines two deities equally: Kotoshironushi and his consort Mihotsuhime. They share the precinct without one taking precedence.
Twice a day, every day, the priests of Miho Jinja perform Miyado — a morning and evening ritual of music and offering. The melodies played, on flute and drums, are among the oldest continuously performed pieces of music in Japan. They have not been written down in a way that allows replication elsewhere. The only place they exist is here, in the hands of the priests who have learned them from the priests before them.
You can watch the ritual from the worship hall. It takes around thirty minutes. The priests do not perform for the audience. They perform because the ritual has been performed at this time, on this day, for an unknown number of years.
The boat festival
Once a year, in early spring, the village reenacts the boat-overturning. In the Aofushigaki Shinji, priests row out into the strait, perform offerings, and ritually capsize a small boat as part of the festival sequence. The story is replayed. The handover is remembered. The village, which has perhaps a thousand residents, fills with visitors for the day, then empties again.
Editor’s note
Time your visit to coincide with the morning or evening Miyado. Stand quietly in the worship hall and let the music happen around you. The strait outside is wide and blue. The boat, by tradition, is still down there somewhere. The god of speech, having given up speaking, did not also give up listening. This is a good place to be quiet.