Le processus d’autonomisation des dieux dans le Japon médiéval. Le cas de Kirime dōji

Abstract

This study follows in the footsteps of the methodological guidelines formulated by Jean-Pierre Vernant on the importance of considering gods as powers who build a system between them. The article looks at the construction process of Kirime, a minor deity of the pantheon of the three shrines of Kumano (south of Wakayama Prefecture) during the medieval period, whose representation in the maṇḍala of Kumano shows him with his right leg amputated. It will be shown that the empowerment of this deity from his tutelary god, Kumano’s gongen, was possible through the intensification of ancient ties with another subordinate deity, Akomachi, celebrated at Fushimi Inari Shrine (Kyoto). The study mainly draws on the analysis of the rite of expelling auxiliary spirits, or gohō okuri, that the pilgrims performed on their return from Kumano at Inari Shrine. I show that the manipulation of these dangerous and protective spirits was entrusted to the Myōbu deity, assimilated to Akomachi, and through her, by the Shinto-Buddhist equivalents, to the ḍākinī, dangerous Buddhist deities. The question of the origin of the one-legged nature of the god leads us to see this figure as the synthesis of mythical elements related to the mastery of water with the transgressive figure of the Buddhist king Kalmāṣapāda.