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Updated: June 26, 2025
From the social conditions represented by the worship of the Ujigami to-day, much can be inferred as to its influence in past times. Almost every Japanese village has its Ujigami; and each district of every large town or city also has its Ujigami. The worship of the tutelar deity is maintained by the whole body of parishioners, the Ujiko, or children of the tutelar god.
No such change could have been wrought by mere decree had not the national sentiment welcomed it.... Moreover, there are three important facts to be remembered in regard to the former Buddhist predomination: Buddhism conserved the family-cult, modifying the forms of the rite; Buddhism never really supplanted the Ujigami cults, but maintained them; Buddhism never interfered with the imperial cult.
But in many instances the Ujigami is really the ancestor of an Uji; as in the case of the great deity of Kasuga, from whom the Fujiwara clan claimed descent. Altogether there were in ancient Japan, after the beginning of the historic era, 1182 clans, great and small; and these appear to have established the same number of cults.
The following extract from Hirata will be found of interest, not only as showing the supposed relation of the individual to the Ujigami, but also as suggesting how the act of abandoning one's birthplace was formerly judged by common opinion: "When a person removes his residence, his original Ujigami has to make arrangements with the Ujigami of the place whither he transfers his abode.
What the household shrine represented to the family, the Shinto parish-temple represented to the community; and the deity there worshipped as tutelar god was called Ujigami, the god of the Uji, which term originally signified the patriarchal family or gens, as well as the family name. Some obscurity still attaches to the question of the original relation of the community to the Uji-god.
But upon the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth of each month the light is always kindled; for these are Shinto holidays of obligation, when offerings must be made to the gods, and when all uji- ko, or parishioners of a Shinto temple, are supposed to visit their ujigami.
People living within those districts are called ujiko, and the temple the ujigami, or dwelling-place of the tutelary god. The ujiko must support the ujigami.
It was to the Ujigami that prayers were made for success in all communal undertakings, for protection against sickness, for the triumph of the lord in time of war, for succour in the season of famine or epidemic. The Ujigami was the giver of all good things, the special helper and guardian of the people.
Its original unit was not the household, but the patriarchal family, that is to say, the gens or clan, a body of hundreds or thousands of persons claiming descent from a common ancestor, and so religiously united by a common ancestor-worship, the cult of the Ujigami.
To what extent the communal cult may have been established in emigrant communities, I have not yet been able to learn. It would appear, however, that the absence of Ujigami in certain emigrant settlements is to be accounted for solely by the pecuniary difficulty of constructing such temples and maintaining competent officials.
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