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As Onisaburo's most important scripture, The Reikai Monogatari (or The Monogatari for short) is a saga of deities in the three spiritual worlds--namely, the shin-kai (world of divinities), the gen-kai (physical world) and the yu-kai (world of lost spirits). It is also an odyssey of how good deities establish a Maitreyan utopia on earth while leading evil spirits to mend their ways with divine power.
Vol. 1 summarizes the Monogatari as follows:
The Reikai Monogatari chronicles how the Saviour Deity Kamususanowo mows down the Great Serpent Yamata-no-Orochi (Satan), presents the divine sword Murakumo to
the Great Original Deity, manifests absolute sincerity in heaven and on earth, realizes the Age of Maitreya, and reinstates the ensnared deity Kunitokotachi of the Earth's divine world as supreme ruler over the spiritual kingdom of the planet.
The author says:
- The Reikai Monogatari is the Matrix-store Realm Sutra of Maitreya-bodhisattva, who Buddha prophesied is to come to save the people 5.67 billion years after his death. (Omoto reads 5-6-7 as mi-ro-ku, the Japanese equivalent for Maitreya.)
- The Monogatari reveals plans to implement a divine reign of the world.
- The Monogatari is the Book of Last Judgment.
Story-wise, the Monogatari recounts a wide
spectrum of events in the spiritual worlds with an enormous cast of deities,
humans, mythological and historical figures, as well as the then-current
personalities including Margaret Sanger, an exponent of birth control.
(Humans are regarded as shrines of the Kami; therefore, they and deities are
often interchangeable in the Tales.) These events and characters are intricately
intertwined, although there are no inconsistencies whatsoever in the plot.
Full of arcana, the Monogatari can be interpreted in 36 different ways.
(Some claim 120 ways of interpretation are possible.)
In addition, it also deals with the creation
of the cosmos, Omoto's raison detre, the grand design for a beatific world,
socioeconomic issues, world thoughts and religions, art critique, and even
theories on love and marriage. And in the process, it incorporates (the
modified versions of) tenets from other religions. For instance, the Monogatari
endorses Swedenborg's observations on the spiritual worlds, rephrases Christian
hymns for Omoto followers, expounds on Buddhist divinities, employs Confucian
and Taoist words and clarifies the state-compiled Shinto texts, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan).
A major theme that penetrates the Tales is
that as children of the Great Original Deity, all humans--men and women,
young and old alike--should love one another in the name of aizen
("love and goodness" or "righteous love"). In fact, Onisaburo set up the Jinrui Aizenkai
(Universal Love and Brotherhood Association) to take the lead in unifying
humanity irrespective of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.
The Monogatari braves 81 volumes in a series
of 83 books (Vol. 64 comes in two books, and there is a special account
detailing the author's mission in Mongolia). As an aside, he originally
intended to produce 120 volumes!
Because of his tight schedule, Onisaburo dictated the Monogatari to his followers. The pace of dictation was astonishing; in the intermittent period from October 8, Taisho 10 (1921) to August 15, Showa 9 (1933), he completed Vols. 1 through 4 (each consists of over 300 B5-size pages) in about 70 days, Vols. 5 through 46 in no longer than one year, and Vol. 46 in just 2 days! By and large, each volume took an average of 3 days. Bear in mind that as chairman of Omoto, Onisaburo was already swamped with other business.
Never using any background papers or reference
books, Onisaburo spoke what sprang up in his mind like flowing water, and
the stenographers wrote it down. He was presumably in some kind of trance;
when dictating a cold-climate scene, he was using the kotatsu leg-warmer,
and when a character was suffering from pain, Onisaburo was in pain, too.
The dictatees did not take shorthand; they wrote
word for word on the manuscript paper, had Onisaburo correct it at intervals
and resumed the dictation. Had they learned shorthand or used a word processor,
each volume could have been produced in a single day.
Years later, an Omoto adherent reminisced about
the dictation process and said as follows:
Seishi-sama ("Master" = Onisaburo) speaks fluently
with his eyes closed, and we write it down. When he says "Hm," it means
he wants us to read aloud what he has said, so we did. After that, Seishi-sama
proofreads it.
She would be warned against asking him to repeat
or clarify what he said. Why? Onisaburo explains: "Sentences come out like
the threads of a silkworm. So when someone stops me, it's like cutting
those silk threads."
The Reikai Monogatari is worth reading as it
is Onisaburo's script for a divine drama of restructuring and rebuilding
the three worlds, and more importantly, his "flesh and blood."
| Excerpts from The Great Onisaburo Deguchi |
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A Story Transcending Space and Time
After his release on bail during
the first Omoto persecution, Onisaburo began the dictation of the Reikai
Monogatari, the concept of which he had been working out in his mind
for some time and which he had also begun to write. This work is based
on the author's experiences while practicing asceticism on Mount Takakuma
near his home village at the age of twenty-six, and Onisaburo in the preface
to the second volume has the following to say about its origin:
This book is the tale of various affairs of the spiritual world and the divine
world which Zuigetsu's [Onisaburo's] spirit was shown as it journeyed in
the spiritual world during a period of one week from March 1st to 7th,
1898. During that time Zuigetsu was commanded to perform austerities by
the Divine World, and during a further period of one week after returning
home, he was commanded to undergo the austerity of being confined to bed.
Everything in the spiritual world transcends time and space, and there
is no distinction between far and near, large and small, or light and dark,
and all the events of the spiritual world, past and present, east and west,
appeared to my spiritual eye two-dimensionally. Therefore I have picked
up the thread and dictated these stories with the main object of making
them as easy as possible for the reader to understand.
Thus, while the content of this book
is colossal and transcends time and space, it takes the form of a novel,
with poems, dissertations, essays, and others scattered throughout the
work so as not to bore the reader. The novelesque style of expression makes
it interesting, and furthermore its easy language makes it approachable
by the ordinary reader.
At the same time, the thought built
into it is on a grand scale, as Eiichi Matsushima writes in his article
"Kozui Otani and Onisaburo Deguchi" in the January 1966 issue of Bungei
Shunju : "In the Monogatari a comprehensive philosophy encompassing
Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto and social thought unfolds in a metrical
narrative style."
But what is remarkable is that this
book is not simply a medium for the setting down of Onisaburo's inner,
spiritual world, but is interspersed with allegorical and abstract prophecies
and warnings like those that can be seen in Mizu no Shinka.
The Fate of the Reikai Monogatari
While Onisaburo produced the Reikai
Monogatari with his superhuman energy and it was published volume after
volume by Tenseisha (Omoto's publishing department), the authorities began
to watch with increasing suspicion. Their astonishment was not without
reason, for not only was the publication carried out at top speed, but
the number of copies was also enormous.
The first volume, for instance,
saw ten editions each amounting to twenty thousand copies, and the other
volumes were printed in an average of four or five editions of ten thousand
copies each. Due to the outbreak of the second Omoto persecution in December
1935, publication stopped at the eighty-first volume, but when Omoto rose
again for the third time after the war, the reprinting of the existing
volumes commenced, and it continues to this day. It is clear that the Reikai
Monogatari is not just a book of prophecies, but, as one of the scriptures
of Omoto, it covers all questions. But in spite of its obviously being
a sacred text, the authorities later made preposterous accusations, saying
that it contained a plot to "undermine the constitutional structure of
the state." In spite of Onisaburo's having covered the relation between
God and man, the origin of Omoto, the state of the spiritual world, the
creation of the universe, on through the divinity of the supreme God, the
divine administration of the world, the causes of the relative positions
of the various gods, morality, world view, religion, philosophy, thought,
politics, economics, education, art, love, and more, the authorities attacked
it from the narrow standpoint of lese-majeste and the Maintenance of the
Public Order Act.
Furthermore, as the spirit of peace
and love of mankind is expounded everywhere, exclusivistic patriotism condemned,
and a universalist philosophy espoused throughout the work, the Monogatari
was seen by the rulers of the time as dangerous.
And so the authorities exerted pressure,
subjecting the work to censorship before publication, and Omoto was put
to endless trouble to rewrite certain passages or remove them completely
and replace them with rows of dots. Interference by the authorities was
severe, and certain whole volumes were banned from sale, or passage after
passage struck out, and there are parts of the Monogatari that have
never been published to this day. And when the second Omoto persecution
occurred, it became the core of the whole affair, the focus of a case of
lese-majeste and contravention of the Maintenance of the Public Order Act.
So we can say that as well as being
dramatic in its content, the history of the Monogatari, fated to
become the center of the second Omoto persecution, can be considered a
drama in itself.
Dictating While Hearing the Sounds of Demolition
The circumstances surrounding the
start of the dictation of the Monogatari can also be said to be
extremely dramatic. It began on October 18, 1921, and two days later the
authorities began the destruction of the sanctuaries. At the time, Onisaburo,
who was at a place called the Shounkaku in a part of Ayabe called Naminatsu,
heard the loud din of the demolition work, but, without seeming in the
least put out, he pressed on with his task.
There were many scribes who took
down Onisaburo's dictation, but the main ones were Masaharu Taniguchi,
Haruko Kato, Shigeo Sakurai, Masazumi Matsumura and Yoshio Higashio.
According to the Seventy-Year
History of Omoto, "The dictation was conducted almost entirely while
lying on futon (Japanese bedding) without a single reference book
at hand. The scribes would take this down not in shorthand but directly
on to manuscript paper, would read out a clean copy and correct any mistakes
in accordance with Onisaburo's directions, and in this way the preparation
of the manuscript proceeded along with the dictation."
We also read that "According to
the scribes, there were times when it seemed that the dictation was being
done in a state of total spiritual possession; there were times when the
dictation was done in a state of possession but with the author at the
same time consciously sorting out his past spiritual experiences; and there
were also times when he dictated in a state of normal consciousness.
In the preface to the first volume
of Tensho Chizui
(the title of volumes 73 to 81 of the Monogatari),
which was dictated in Kameoka beginning in the autumn of 1933, Onisaburo
touches on the circumstances and the process of the dictation of the Monogatari,
which continued from 1921 to 1926, and also tells of his attitude at the
resumption of the work.
In
accordance with the divine instructions of the Deities of Heaven and the
request of the spirit of the Foundress...the divine work has become increasingly
active with the passing of the years.... At length, choosing an auspicious
day in mid-autumn, the fourth of October of 1933, and putting aside all
other miscellaneous concerns, I have begun the dictation of the seventh
section, giving it the title Tensho Chizui. At Chitose-an on the
island Nakanoshima in the garden Gyokusen-en in Ten-on-kyo, I set out on
the long road of dictation and editing under the protection of the divine
command, having purified my mind and body. Now I have prayed for the safe
completion of this great spiritual work on which I am about to embark with
[the author lists the names of his scribes], at the Gekkyuden, Taishoden,
Kotenkaku and other sanctuaries.
The effort and seriousness which
Onisaburo put into the
Monogatari
were great, but with Tensho
Chizui it was especially so. His earnest prayers and his serious and
reverent attitude abound in this preface. And Omoto believers are given
strict instructions when reading
Tensho Chizui to wash their hands,
purify their mouths, clap their hands in prayer and sit in the ceremonial
position.
Thirty years later, Teruyo Uchizaki,
one of the scribes, recollected Onisaburo's style of dictation: "The Master
would speak fluently, with his eyes closed, and we would take down his
words. When the Master said 'Hm,' it was the sign for us to reread the
part we had just written for checking. But if we should ask about a part
that was not clear to us while he was in the middle of dictating, he would
scold us."
Onisaburo explained that he scolded
them because "The words come out smoothly like silk thread from a silkworm,
so if the flow is stopped in the middle, it will snap the thread.
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