Significance of Military Power in the Jindai Moji Text Hotsuma Tsutae—With a Focus on Susanoo and Yamato Takeru

The jindai moji (神代文字—“characters of the Age of the Gods”) are pseudocharacters (疑字: “giji”) created in the early modern period, which purport to be an ancient Japanese writing script. One of the most famous examples of literature written in the jindai moji is the epic poem Hotsuma Tsutae, which is regarded as an account of the development of medieval mythology in the early modern age. It includes tales of evil lords known as the hatare (rendered as 魔王 in Kanbun), who bring chaos to the land and are vanquished by a divine army led by gods. Ultranationalists in early modern Japan enthusiastically embraced these jindai moji writings. This article examines the significance of the divine battles in the early modern jindai moji literature.