On a Godless Planet:Volume2A Chapter 7
Chapter 7: Junction[edit]
The perfect balance between eating and listening
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The second floor of the McDonald’s at Tachikawa Station’s north entrance was already crowded that morning.
This was partially because the working lower gods and spirits visited early in the morning, but also…
“Holding another emergency meeting so soon feels like the start of a new pattern.”
“We kind of had to gather after we ran across a few problems.”
“Oh, Senpai-chan, I should give you this before we start talking, or exchanging information, or whatever.”
“A From Chubu bag? Can I look inside?”
“Yeah, go for it. Kuwajiri-chan apparently won a drawing when she was buying a bunch of stuff yesterday.”
Everyone watched on curiously as I pulled a t-shirt from the bag.
“It’s a t-shirt that says ‘Big Boobies’ on it.”
“But, but, but, why me? That describes you better than me.”
“There’s no way I could fit in that size of shirt.”
“In other words, you’re on another level entirely.”
“Ever since your big boobs became a target of worship, that shirt has been popular among the local spirits and gods.”
“A-are you sure about that?”
Whatever the case, I put the t-shirt away. And Shifu…
“Wait, I forget to check if this place is okay with the Mesopotamians.”
“As long as we can choose what we order, there is no problem. Besides, pork is considered an inferior ingredient, but it is not banned altogether.”
“We can eat most any kind of burger. The Filet-O-Fish has a weird flavor, but I kind of like it.”
“At McD’s, the muffins on the breakfast menu use pork patties, so be careful. And the teriyaki burger that’s been popular for a while now uses a pork patty too.”
“You probably don’t need us to tell you this, but the Bacon Mac has bacon, so it obviously has pork.”
“They advertise their ‘all beef patties’, but they have a lot of other stuff too, don’t they?”
<To clarify, the muffin patties have pork because they are sausage patties. The Bacon Mac uses a beef patty with bacon included, so in later years it is replaced by the bacon lettuce burger which uses the bacon as the patty.>
“Geh, but I really like the Bacon Mac.”
“Is smoked meat a good match for European gods?”
“No, I just like how much meat it has – and how you get two different types of meat at once.”
“Um, how do you get your vegetables?”
“I’m a harvest god, remember? There isn’t much farmland in Tachikawa, but I can still get a lot of that from the ‘phase’.”
“…”
“That’s not fair!”
“It’s best to get it through offerings made by believers, though.”
“Nature gods are born from the natural environment, so a harvest god is created from the crops grown in that land. But unless you rule a vast area of land, that doesn’t amount to very much of an existence without any believers to ‘acknowledge and elevate’ you.”
“Yeah, that’s why I only collect what I absolutely need in a day from the phase.”
“Does Senpai-san not have anything like that?”
“She does, but Shinto gods are highly role based.”
●
Shifu thought about what Omokane said.
Were they just chatting before exchanging information on the previous day’s events? Or was this setting up some important information?
She was interested regardless, so she played along.
“So with Shinto gods, you’re born from nature as nature gods, but you’re also given ‘roles’ or ‘jobs’ you’re supposed to complete?”
“Yes. Takamagahara, the home of the Heavenly Gods, is a world you can think of as an administrative city and its structure is pasted onto the lower world. With that in mind, can you see how Shinto’s Tenson Korin has a special factor when compared to your mythologies?”
Okay, she’s definitely just getting sidetracked, thought Shifu as Tooru replied.
“The Tenson Korin is the thing where a god’s descendant started the Japanese royal family, right? Are you referring to how Japanese mythology has a very strong ‘divine right of kings’ message?”
“Well answered! Yes, using mythology to establish the divine right of kings is one the craftier human inventions and I quite like it. Whether or not it’s a good thing is a separate issue, though.”
“Um? What are you talking about?”
Oh, right. Senpai-chan is a super commoner god who grew up deep in the mountains. I can see why she wouldn’t understand this, thought Shifu, deciding to explain.
“So the divine right of kings is the idea that gods like us gave a human representative the right to be king or emperor or whatever.”
“Oh, yes, I know that much. But what was that about it being a crafty human invention?”
“So the myths say the gods handed down the right to be king, but where did those myths come from?”
“Well…”
“Ah!”
“Now do you get it?”
“I-isn’t that circular reasoning?”
It was. Shifu saw Tooru give a deep nod out of the corner of her eye as she continued.
“Whether or not the right of kings is explicitly stated in the myths, if it was intentionally included there, then it means whoever created that myth shoved a story about the origin of the right of kings into the mythology. That means the king or the throne already existed, but the king wanted to prove his right to rule. By including that story in his people’s mythology, he could just point to the mythology as proof.”
“Myths originally came from people making gods who represented the natural threats they faced and telling stories about them. Using those myths for political purposes was a major invention.”
“Based on how the myths came to be, the divine right of kings isn’t found much in Gondwanan Mythologies, but the king’s origin is very commonly found in Laurasian Mythologies.”
“Does that mean Bilgamesh-san is one of those stories?”
Bil-chan tilted his head at Senpai-chan’s question.
“Whether or not we are – or rather, whether Bil is – a divine right of kings story is a bit unclear.”
“But isn’t his a story about being a half-god, half-man who was created by a god and ruled as king?”
“Our story was created by a later era.”
“I see. So you are the very story used by later kings to prove their own divine right. And…”
Omokane-chan wagged her right finger.
“And the same can be said of Kidou-kun since she is a half-god, half-man created by a god. Bilgamesh-kun’s right as king has a separate origin and this shows us that Mesopotamian mythology reaches far back into history. As for our country’s divine right of kings…”
Shifu thought she knew why Omokane-chan turned toward Senpai-chan there, so she raised her hand and said it first.
“Hey, Senpai-chan?”
“Yes?”
“Come to think of it, your sister goes on to be the mother of the Japanese people and a direct link to the imperial family, so aren’t you a part of Japan’s divine right of kings story?”
“…”
“Th-that’s all about my sister while I’m the shut-in who failed to get married, so it doesn’t count, even if I don’t really understand any of this!”
Is it just me or is Senpai-chan surprisingly ignorant of how the world works?
●
“Anyway,” began Omokane.
“The divine right of kings isn’t enough to fully explain what makes the Tenson Korin – the way gods descended to the earth to create the human world – so special. Do you see anything else special when compared to other mythologies?”
Kubiko-kun wrote “sidetracked” on a paper napkin and surreptitiously showed it to Omokane, but Omokane ignored it. You can always use more knowledge!
Plus, this was the difference between them and the enemy they would soon be facing. So…
“What makes it special? Try to take that next step! You’ll need to make a leap of logic here, 7th and 5th Generations.”
“Are we a part of this now?”
Bilgamesh nodded next to Kidou.
“I will start by saying I do not know much about Shinto, but if this is taking the divine right of kings a step further and it is related to the roles you discussed before, could it be that the entire government, administration, and social system also had their origin in the gods?”
“Exactly!”
An excellent answer.
“In most mythologies, the divine right of kings is used to prove and preserve the right of the king – or of the ‘throne’ or ‘royal family’ – to rule. But in Shinto, the myths reference the gods having an administration and jobs. That means you can see the entire government and the society itself as being god-approved. Which is why Japan became known as the Land of the Gods or as the Divine States.”
“I see. But was that done intentionally?”
“Oh, an objection? This I have to hear.”
The 5th generation’s representative crossed his arms.
“In later mythologies, humanity generally had its social system already in place. Even if the mythology was created unintentionally, the humans would naturally base the hierarchy and society of the gods on their own.”
“I would rather not assist Omokane-san’s digression, but it’s a little more complicated than that with Shinto.”
“Is this about to get bloody?”
Kubiko-kun thought on Shifu-kun’s question for a moment.
“Go ahead and say it! Because it’s more fun that way!”
“No egging us on, Yatsui.”
But she still sighed, opened a Revelation Board, and wrote out a short list of dates.
“The Kojiki was compiled in the year 712 and the Nihon Shoki in the year 720, but Japan did have history books before that.”
●
As a librarian, Scarecrow was an expert on this.
Senpai-san was definitely involved in it, so she chose her words carefully out of kindness.
“The older Japanese history books we know of include the Teiki, the Kyuji, the Fumihito, and the Yomo-no-Fumi. Oh, and there are supposedly more. But none that are extant.”
“That’s a lot…”
It was.
“It’s thought there were so many because of the medium they were based in.”
“What medium?”
“Paper.”
●
“Books made of paper. How modern.”
“Leave the bad jokes to the human, Ki.”
“S-Sumeragi-kun’s jokes have a different edge to them!”
<Yes, they are much more irritating!!>
●
You need the mental fortitude to endure the bad jokes, thought Scarecrow while breathing in deep.
She decided to keep going.
“Different cultures recorded their myths in different media – Mesopotamia on clay tablets, Ancient Egypt on papyrus, China on bamboo slips, and so on. And then China invented paper. It’s thought paper started to be made around 200 BCE. A production method was established at around 100 CE and that method was introduced to Baekje during the 5th century. From there, it was imported to Japan where production began in the 5th or 6th century.”
“Now,” she said.
“When written language was brought to Japan from China, it came on paper, so Japanese writing got its start on paper. Wooden slips were only used for support or for long-term storage and bamboo slips weren’t used at all. That means Japanese mythology also got its start in paper.”
“That’s the advantage of starting late. You got to begin with a medium that’s still used in modern times?”
“Ha ha ha. Jealous?”
“That isn’t for you to act smug about, Omokane-san.”
Anyway, starting with paper had an important meaning.
“Using paper as the storage medium gave Japanese writing a certain advantage and quirk: it could be stored in large quantities.”
●
“Oh,” said Shifu with a nod.
It didn’t take much imagination to realize what Scareko-chan meant.
“The same storeroom can hold far more writing on paper than it can on clay tablets, bamboo slips, or wooden slips, right?”
“Yes. A difference in medium also functions as a form of storage compression.”
“Compression?”
“As an X68 user, I know what she means.”
“I don’t think we needed to know any of that.”
“In the sense of expanding effective storage capacity, it is at least on topic. Electronic storage is superior to paper in the same way paper is superior to clay tablets. And that is why the extant texts on Japanese mythology are a lot longer than comparative texts for other mythologies.”
And…
“I think the creation, development, scattering, and loss of the non-extant Japanese myths is closely related to the spread of paper production.”
●
Scarecrow decided to try and get things back on topic here.
She sighed and reached for the breakfast still waiting on the table. But she only had a coffee. Everyone else reached for their burgers, and…
“How did we get on this topic from talking about burgers?”
“We were talking about how I sustain myself from the phase as a harvest god and they mentioned how Shinto focuses more on roles?”
“Shifu-san, you’re good at summing things up, aren’t you?”
“Anyone would be after dealing with Sumeragi-chan and Senpai-chan long enough.”
“A-am I that hard to understand!?”
Everyone turned toward Scarecrow.
…Y-you expect me to answer her!?
Please spare me, she thought deep down, but she said what she had to.
“Senpai-san, this is not about how easy or difficult you are to understand. You are valuable to us because you can actually hold a conversation with Sumeragi-kun.”
“Thank you!”
Everyone demonstrated their divine kindness by not commenting.
●
“You’re pretty good with words, Kubiko-kun.”
“A scarecrow who shows the way needs to know how to interact with people!”
“Can we please move on?”
●
They needed to get back on topic.
Everyone must have sensed a change in the air because they began eating while they talked.
Across the table from Scarecrow, Shifu’s tray contained a Bacon Mac and an Egg McMuffin. But she made sure to stick a napkin in her container of fries to soak up the grease before eating them.
“You mentioned that here was a Japanese mythology older than the current one, right? What was the uncompiled pre-paper stuff like?”
She makes it so easy to talk, thought Scarecrow. I really appreciate having someone like her around.
…Tenma-kun usually fills that role, but she is waiting down below as a guard!
The Norse knowledge god was with her. The two were probably monitoring this conversation while exchanging their own knowledge, which sounded like fun.
But Scarecrow was exchanging knowledge with these higher gods.
As for the older Japanese mythology…
“Several books have been passed down, but most of them contain the same stories, just like the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki do, and they tend to focus on the imperial genealogy more than anything. So unlike the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, they are either about the divine right of kings or are a list of historical events.”
“So like our genealogy of kings. That’s simple enough.”
Bilgamesh seemed to realize something and quickly added more.
“Did that come from the development of and ability to produce paper?”
“I can’t say for sure.”
What did that mean? Senpai-san asked about it while tilting her head and opening her salad.
“Does the development of and ability to produce paper have something to do with the mythological stories?”
●
It makes things simpler when you know who understands and who doesn’t, thought Scarecrow.
There was such a thing as understanding too well – with Omokane as the prime example – but Shifu was just right in that regard. Senpai-san was just right on the other end because she understood what it was she didn’t understand.
“Japan had its start with paper, but its paper production technology wasn’t that great to begin with and it didn’t spread overnight.”
Listen.
“At first, they couldn’t produce much paper and paper was valuable, so most records would have been kept short. The idea of using lots of paper wouldn’t have occurred to them.”
“Clay tablets were the same, but we have far more official documents than we do stories or poems. I imagine it was the same with paper, so I bet they increased the production to meet the demand for those documents and consequently had enough paper to write down long myths.”
“Yes. So it is thought the myths and history books that precede the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki would have been short. And the few history books that do exist are really only genealogies.”
Scarecrow displayed a list of the nonextant documents she had shown them before.
“The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki include references to these books. Of them, the Tennoki was supposedly compiled by the year 620, but, like I said, paper production had begun in Japan by then, so I think these things were related to the rise of paper as a medium. Plus, the Yamato court was located in Nara, which is a great source of the materials needed to produce paper.”
“And a few hundred years later in the 700s when the Kojiki and Nihon Shiki were compiled, they were producing quite a bit of paper there, which allowed the myths to get longer?”
“Correct,” confirmed Scarecrow before noticing that Senpai-san seemed lost in thought.
“Do you have a question, Senpai-san?”
“Oh, um…”
Eventually, she responded.
“I’m part of those myths, so I was wondering if all that extra paper is why they wrote so much about me and turned me into a cursed god.”
●
“Hmmm! That’s a tricky one! Most gods would prefer to have more stories about them.”
“What would have happened if they hadn’t had so much paper?”
<Given how the story goes, she might have been no more than the goddess who failed to get married.>
“C-couldn’t you just say ‘the goddess who wasn’t chosen’!?”
<There is a theory that the Hieda no Are, who is said to have dictated the Kojiki, was a woman. If so, I can see why the stories are so harsh about such things.>
“Oh, so you’re saying it was like gossip?”
“To be fair, later depictions of me added in all sorts of stuff.”
“Meanwhile, I have a tiny role despite being a Heavenly God. The author needs to do a lot better when it comes to me!”
“It’s a little late to ask for that! You get that, don’t you!?”
●
“Anyway,” continued Scarecrow.
“Speaking of paper quantity, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were created as a compilation of all the past myths, which presupposes an ample supply of paper.”
“And that compilation became what is now known as Japanese mythology, right? If so, were the old myths pretty much the same, just simpler?”
“That’s the thing.”
Scarecrow moved her hand to scroll back in time on her Revelation Board list.
“About half a century before the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were compiled, Japan experienced a coup d'état known as the Isshi Incident, which led to the Taika Reforms.”
“A coup d'état?”
“Yes. The head of the Soga clan had gotten close enough to the emperor to usurp the throne, so another noble had him executed.”
●
“I know I asked earlier, but this just got bloody, huh?”
“You asked about it, so there’s no backing out now. Anyway, the Soga clan, a powerful noble clan at the time, was defeated in the Isshi Incident. Soga no Emishi, an important member of the Soga clan, killed himself by burning his house down the following day. That fire also destroyed the Tennoki, but some other history books survived the fire. However…”
Scarecrow chose her words carefully.
“It is said a few of those history books worked to support the Soga clan’s power.”
A breath.
“You see where this is going, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” groaned Shifu before responding.
“Didn’t you say no history books predating the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki still exist?”
“Yes, I did. And why is that!?”
●
“They really did it, didn’t they?”
“Are we talking about a book burning!? No, a conspiracy theory! We have a conspiracy theory on our hands! How exciting!”
“Please be quiet, Omokane-san.”
<As you might guess, the Kojiki and especially the Nihon Shoki do a lot to downplay the Soga clan’s achievements and highlight the achievements of the Fujiwara clan, which came to power afterwards.>
“But,” Scarecrow added to Balancer’s comment.
“Back to the lost history books. They were supposedly complied by the year 620 or earlier, but China’s Sui dynasty fell in 618 and the Tang dynasty came to power afterwards. The compilation of Japan’s myths was probably also meant to clarify Japan’s position and origins when they were faced with a new powerful empire in Tang. In fact, the first Japanese expedition to Tang China was in the year 630. A Tang emissary accompanied them back to Japan and ordered Japan to become a Chinese vassal state, but Emperor Jomei refused and sent the emissary back. And the next expedition wasn’t until 653, by which time the next Tang emperor was in power.”
“Was it the second expedition to Sui China in 607 where the Japanese emissary failed to read the room and made the punk declaration that he was ‘from the land of the rising sun’? I bet they made those myths just to prove they really were ‘the land of the rising sun’ and that gave the emperor the confidence he needed to refuse. I mean, the first expedition to Sui China was in 600 and they went to Sui without even a letter from the emperor, so Japan had really learned how to do things right by 30 years later.”
“And,” said Omokane.
“The old history books established the right to rule for their own people and for other countries, but they had to be updated after certain political changes. A new era began when the capital was moved to Heijo-kyo in 710 and a largescale set of laws known as the Taiho Code was established. In 712, the Kojiki was remade, including the ‘gods’ who were subjugated across the country.”
In other words…
“Most likely, there were three versions of the Japanese myths: those before the old history books, those after the old history books, and the modern ones.
“The oldest ones were stories about nature gods without much about the imperial genealogy. Without paper, they were spread orally. There were a lot of them, but they couldn’t all be gathered together into a single, coherent story.
“The next are the ‘old versions’ compiled with the purpose of showing how the country came to be. Paper still wasn’t that developed as a medium and they needed to clearly indicate the imperial genealogy, so they were kept simple, didn’t have as many gods as the modern ones, and didn’t get into the roles of the gods very much.
‘And once the gods from all the different regions were added in and their stories were fleshed out as much as the paper would allow – both to give them legitimacy and to indicate a society – you get the modern stories we know now. That’s how I see it, anyway.”
“That’s a lot of speculation. But does this mean what I think it does?”
“I think I know what you’re saying, but spell it out for us.”
“Right,” said Shifu. “So there were the oral stories at first. And then they redid it all once to give it a political meaning. And then they redid it all again to include more political meaning and to include stuff from a wider area.”
She took a breath.
“The way they did all this within the one country like that…doesn’t it break the rule that myths are created by humanity’s movements? It’s really hard to tell which generation Shinto belongs to.”
●
Raidou squished down his teriyaki burger to fit it in his mouth. The lettuce really gives it a satisfying crunch, he noted.
“Since Japanese mythology was developed so late, it feels more like its based on humanity more than on the myths.”
“That’s right. It provides divine right to not just the throne but to the entire court and society. And, while it’s not the only reason, that throne was never again usurped. Because anyone who wanted to take the throne would have to convince all the people of Japan they were legitimate as a new ruler.”
“But Japan was a paper culture, so its history stuck around and the people learned to read and write, right? If a newcomer wanted to make the case they were the legitimate ruler, they’d only have political cards to play.”
“So what would they have to do?”
Kidou raised her hand and immediately answered.
“On the violent end of things, there’s conquest.”
<That certainly is the simplest answer.>
“And simple is best, isn’t it? Of course, it isn’t possible unless you have a much bigger army and the backlash would be rough.”
“Then you could continue to honor the throne’s right to rule while acquiring all of the political power through human means, giving yourself all the effective benefits of ruling, just without the title. In Ancient Mesopotamia, the victor of a war between cities would absorb the loser but adopt the loser’s gods into their own mythology rather than eliminate them. You could use a similar strategy by acquiring all effective power while honoring the throne’s divine right to rule in name only.”
What would happen if Bilgamesh’s method was used? In Japan’s case…
“That sounds like it would ultimately lead to the creation of a constitutional monarchy. So I guess you could say the point of leaving the monarchy in place is closely related to the existence of the mythology?”
“That depends on the country. But…”
Raidou got ahead of the knowledge god.
“This has been a long talk, but it wasn’t pointless, was it?”
“Oh? I only meant it as a fun digression before we got started on our discussion and reports. Did someone make it meaningful at some point?”
“Omokane-chaaaan? That was an awfully well-structured digression,” said Shifu. “You started talking about how Japanese mythology is special because of the Tenson Korin. Your point was that human politics remade the mythology, wasn’t it?”
“Precisely. And if it is so well-structured, do you know what I am going to talk about next?”
“I do,” said Raidou.
“Mythologies can be remade for various reasons. If the conditions are right, the original mythology can be remade into something else. That’s what you’ve established.”
That made it obvious where this was going.
“The recent trouble has us going up against a mythology that underwent a change like that.”
“Which mythology do you think that is?”
Based on what was going on, he could only think of one possibility.
“Roman mythology and Olympus mythology. Those two are linked by that kind of mythological remaking.”
Interlude[edit]
“Once a day, I’ve got to demonstrate how clever I am.”
“So why does it seem so surprising every single time?”
“Kuwajiri-chan, try to be nice.”
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