Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (231 page)

41.
The historian Yasumaru Yoshio notes that according to Miyaji, the
daij
sai
rite was discontinued from 1466 to 1687, replaced by a ritual of purification by water, and it was no longer needed. The
daij
sai
was resumed in 1687, under the influence of Suika Shinto, which emphasized the emperor's
bansei ikkei
. Henceforth the emperor was a god not only for reasons of bloodline descent but also because Amaterasu
mikami had directly invested him with divinity as a result of his sharing of sacred grain with her. This was the concept of the
daij
sai
adopted by the Meiji elite in an official instruction on the
daij
sai
in 1871. See Yasumaru Yoshi
,
Kindai tenn
z
no keisei
(Iwanami Shoten, 1992), p. 23. The adherents of the heretical Shinto sects of
motoky
and Tenriky
rejected this official view.

42.
Nakajima,
Tenn
no daigawari to kokumin
, p. 58; Okada, Hikuma, “Sokui no rei, daij
sai no rekishiteki kent
,” p. 79.