Pan Gu and his Descendents: Chinese Cosmology in Medieval Japan

Abstract

Chinese cosmology has had a deep impact on Japanese culture, not only on the philosophical plane, but also in the religious domain. Under a mythologic and ritual form, Chinese notions such as the theory of the Five Phases or Agents (wuxing) spread throughout medieval Japan,through the intermediary of the so-called Way of Yin and Yang (Onmyodo). The present article examines the development of the myth of the Primordial Man, Pan Gu, who became in Japan King Banko and of his five children (corresponding to the Five Agents), as found in ritual texts such as the Gogyo no saimon. The passage from chaos to cosmos, through the harmonization of the Five Agents, is thus described mythologically as the resolution of a conflict that opposed one of these “Princes” (oji), named Goro (“Fifth Son,” corresponding to the Agent Earth) to his four brothers. Myths of that kind illustrate the popularity of the cult of the Earth deity (Kenro Jijin) in medieval Japan even within Buddhism as well as the survival of notions inherited from Han cosmology. They also show how these notions were adapted to the Japanese context and contributed to the creation of a specifically Japanese culture.