![]() ![]() The honorific form is mi - tama or go-rei. Disembodied, the tama may be a kami or aspect of a kami, or a spirit of an ancestor or other dead person. The road between Utsunomiya and Nikkô, when I travelled along it in 1870, was still a tama-boko no michi-in the phallic sense. Tama is an entity which resides in something to which it gives life and vitality, whether this is human, animal, or a natural feature etc. Another name for the phallic Sahe no kami was Chimata no kami, or road-fork-gods, because they had no temples and were worshipped by the road-sides and at cross-ways. Notwithstanding the Japanese poets' habit of using stock epithets without much regard to their proper meaning, this juxtaposition is highly suggestive. As compared with the great religions of the world, Shinto, the old Kami cult of Japan, is decidedly rudimentary in its character. ![]() The Chiburi no kami were the phallic road deities, protectors of travellers. The poet Tsurayuki (tenth century) has left a short poem in which he expresses his intention of praying to the Tamaboko no chiburi no kami when starting on a journey. The tama-boko no michi would then mean "the road where phallic symbols are set up." There is abundant evidence that objects of this kind were a familiar sight by the roadsides near the capital in ancient times. Several mitama are recognized in Shint and folk religions. Moreover, on the theory that the tama-boko is a phallus, we have a satisfactory explanation of the circumstance that tama-boko no is used as a standing epithet of michi, road, which has puzzled Japanese scholars. tama, formally mitama, in Japanese religion, a soul or a divine or semidivine spirit also an aspect of a spirit. We have another Japanese case of a conventionalized phallus in the wo-bashira. Also known as The-Way-Of-The-Gods, Shinto is the indigenous Japanese religion that holds the belief that everything in our world is inhabited by a Kami. Tama may be rendered ball or knob as well as jewel, and the tama-boko might therefore be a shaft surmounted by a knob representing the glans, reminding us of the spears tipped with pine cones which were carried by the Bacchantes in the Dionysia. The notion of kami also shares some semantic elements with concepts such as mono (entity endowed with supernatural powers), tama (spirit), and kokoro (mind). The derivation of tama-boko also lends itself to it. ![]()
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