Great Construction

Clan Tutelary Deities

     After the people who arrive at a place for the first time establish settlement, and then gradually prosper, in several generations a village or hamlet will be formed. The inhabitants of the community will start to feel the need to enshrine a deity, and thus they enshrine the ancestor who started their community. That is a clan tutelary deity.
     As the hamlet grows bit by bit, occasion calls for a native place tutelary deity to be enshrined, and as one solution, the clan tutelary deity is given the higher rank, and dedicated as the native place tutelary deity, so as can be seen quite often today, the native place deity and the clan deity are easily confused.
     Another aspect is that in olden times, as it came time to construct a shrine for the native place tutelary deity, a portion of the spirit of the deity of a nearby shrine was transferred to the new shrine. This was the occasion for the rise in rank of many fox deities. For the most part, the enshrined deities of native place shrines have more or less the above-described three chronologies.

Hikari, Issue 20, July 30, 1949
    translated by cynndd