mitama
Sign in to saveThe Japanese word refers to the spirit of a kami or the soul of a dead person. It is composed of two characters, the first of which, , is simply an honorific. The second, means "spirit". The character pair , also read , is used exclusively to refer to a ''kami's spirit. Significantly, the term is a synonym of shintai, the object which in a Shinto shrine houses the enshrined kami''.
Article
6 sectionsContents
- {{Lang|ja-Latn|Ara-mitama}} and {{Lang|ja-Latn|nigi-mitama}}
- ''Saki-mitama''
- ''Kushi-mitama''
- Mitama Festival
- See also
- References
The Japanese word refers to the spirit of a kami or the soul of a dead person. It is composed of two characters, the first of which, , is simply an honorific. The second, means "spirit". The character pair , also read , is used exclusively to refer to a ''kami's spirit. Significantly, the term is a synonym of shintai, the object which in a Shinto shrine houses the enshrined kami.
Early Japanese definitions of the mitama, developed later by many thinkers like Motoori Norinaga, maintain it consists of several "spirits", relatively independent one from the other. The most developed is the , a Shinto theory according to which the of both kami and human beings consists of one whole spirit and four sub spirits. The four sub-spirits are the , the , the and the .