Crafting a Goddess in Premodern Japan: Divinity and Motherhood in Narratives of Empress Jingū

According to legend, a pregnant Empress Jingū conquered the Korean peninsula in the third century with the help of Shinto deities and went on to rule Japan for nearly seventy years. A triumphant woman warrior and favorite of the gods, Jingū seemed destined to become a deity herself. But how do you create a goddess? Emily Simpson takes up this question as she follows Jingū’s centuries-long transformation into a divine protector of childbirth and motherhood. Prominent priests at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples as well as regional women’s groups took the empress’ story and reshaped it to support their own institutional and professional interests. Through vivid tales of Jingū conversing with gods, postponing labor, and vanquishing her enemies, they fashioned a complex and influential deity who is still worshipped today.

In the wake of the Mongol Invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, religious complexes dedicated to the warrior deity Hachiman began creating narratives of Jingū giving birth to the god in the form of her son, the future Emperor Ōjin, thus affirming Hachiman’s divine power from “inside the womb.” Stories of a “Hachiman Jingū” wearing armor over her pregnant body and speaking to her unborn son spread across Japan alongside the worship of Hachiman. Simpson argues that a similar process followed the Japanese invasions of Korea some three centuries later when two women-centered groups—one at the Awashima shrines, the other tied to the Katsurame guild near Kyoto—started promoting Jingū as a goddess of fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. They linked the worship of Jingū to everyday garments such as maternity sashes for pregnant women and headdresses worn by female professionals, binding the empress to objects worn and crafted by ordinary women.

Crafting a Goddess is the first in-depth study of Empress Jingū in English. Students and scholars of Japanese religion will value Simpson’s investigation of this vibrant deity through the combined lenses of gender, locality, and material culture, reframing our understanding of lived religious experience in premodern Japan.

• Emily B. Simpson, Author

  Emily B. Simpson is assistant professor in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University.