okuninushi

Updated: May 21, 2025

You cannot hope to live more than one hundred years in the most favourable circumstances, but as you will go to the unseen realm of Okuninushi after death and be subject to his rule, learn betimes to bow down before heaven. The spirits of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about us, and they all become gods of varying character and degrees of influence.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The Kume were descended from Amatsu Kume no Mikoto, and their duties were to act as chamberlains and as guards of the Court. Finally, there was the Oga-uji, descended from Okuninushi, which makes the eighth of the great uji. Thus, the military uji of Mononobe and Otomo gave to the State twenty-two ministers out of forty during a space of some twelve centuries.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era