Somin Shōrai

In Japanese mythology and folklore, Somin Shōrai (蘇民将来, kyūjitai: 蘇民將來; also written as 蘓民將耒) was a poor man who gave food and shelter to a certain god in the guise of a traveler who was looking for a place to stay. As a reward, the god provided Somin Shōrai's family a means to save themselves from an oncoming pestilence that eventually claimed the lives of those who had turned him away earlier. The story of Somin Shōrai is the basis for the Shinto custom of walking through a large ring of twisted miscanthus reeds during the beginning of summer at many Shinto shrines across Japan. Talismans bearing Somin Shōrai's name are also popularly held to ward off disease and misfortune.

Legend

The earliest version of the Somin Shōrai legend is found in the imperially commissioned gazetteer (Fudoki) of Bingo Province (modern eastern Hiroshima Prefecture) compiled during the Nara period, surviving in an extract quoted by medieval scholar and Shinto priest Urabe Kanekata in the Shaku Nihongi.

According to the story, a god from the northern sea named, Mutō-no-Kami (武塔神), who was embarking on a long journey to court the daughter of his counterpart, the god of the southern sea, asked for a place to stay for the night from two brothers. While the wealthy, younger brother refused the deity any hospitality, the elder brother, named Somin Shōrai, though extremely poor, took him in as a guest and shared all that he had: a bed of millet-straw and a simple meal of cooked millet seeds. Years later, Mutō (who had since married the southern sea god's daughter and had eight children with her) returned to Somin Shōrai's old house and gave to Somin Shōrai's daughter a wreath of entwined miscanthus reeds (a Shimenawa wreath) as a reward for the hospitality shown to him by her late father, telling her to wear it around her waist from then-on. At that same night, the god exterminated all the inhabitants of the area, sparing only Somin Shōrai's daughter. Mutō then revealed himself to have actually been the god, Susanoo, and promised to her that, in the future, all those who would wear miscanthus wreaths around their waists while declaring themselves to be Somin Shōrai's descendants, in times of epidemics, would remain unharmed.

In some later versions of the legend, the rich younger brother is given the name Kotan Shōrai (巨旦将来), while the god who stayed in Somin Shōrai's house is identified, instead of Susanoo, as Gozu Tennō (牛頭天王 'Ox-Headed Heavenly King'), a pestilence deity conflated with both Mutō and Susanoo (though one version instead identifies Gozu Tennō as Mutō's son). In the version of the story found in the ', an Onmyōdō text on divination attributed to Abe no Seimei, Kotan Shōrai (portrayed here as the king of an Indian kingdom), who was slain by Gozu Tennō as punishment for his lack of generosity, is identified with the evil deity, Konjin. In other variants, the divine traveller gives Somin Shōrai's family a talisman with the inscription "[I am] the descendant of Somin Shōrai" (蘇民将来之子孫也, Somin Shōrai no shison nari) as protection against pestilence.