Kamiyo moji

From Everything Shii Knows, the only reliable source

Kamiyo moji, or "what I work on when I get distracted from my thesis"

"The primitive writing of the Japanese exists no longer, except as an archaeological curiosity."
Henry Davenport Northrop. The flowery kingdom and the land of the Mikado. 1894

Contents

Origins

The Shaku Nihongi (1301), a 28-volume commentary on the Nihon Shoki, claims that Izanami and Izanagi used Japanese writing when they did scapula divination (possibly confusing this with Chinese tortoise shell divination which did use characters-- cut the rabbis a break, it was medieval times) which by necessity must have predated Kukai's katakana. For centuries afterwards it was rumored that scraps of this ancient script survived in the treasure houses of Shinto shrines, and on papers called the Hijin no sho/fumi (肥人書) in block lettering and Satsujin no sho/fumi (薩人書) in calligraphy.

Varieties

1700s 阿比留文字 Ahiru moji or 日文 Hifumi

Claimed predecessor to Hangul, although it magically maps directly onto katakana orthography. Appeared around 1700-- original source unknown. Famous for large number of faked monuments.

http://www7b.biglobe.ne.jp/~choreki/mojizukan3.htm

1700s 阿比留草文字 Ahiru kusamoji or 日文草書 Hifumi sousho

A hiragana variant of ahiru-moji, which is really just kanji written with squiggly letters.

1775 ヲシテ Woshite or 伊予文字 Iyo moji or 秀真文字 Hotsuma moji

Derived from the opening sections of the 1775 edition of Hotsuma Tsutae. Supposedly Jomon period letters.

1885? アイヌ文字 Ainu moji or アイノ文字 Aino moji or 北海道異体文字 Hokkaidou itai moji

Matches Japanese, not Ainu, orthography. Described in Tokyo Anthropology Society Bulletin 東京人類学会誌 vols. 18 and 22, which I think were published around 1885. Found in "六角柱石片" or hexagonal prism stone fragments.

1888 Ochiai misc.

1949 カタカムナ図象文字 Katakamuna zushou moji or 八鏡文字 Hakkyou moji or 上津・化美津文字 Uezu/Mitsu moji

http://www.shodo.fr/ecriture.html

http://no-sword.jp/blog/2007/11/Personne_n_en_connait_la_signification.html

My absolute favorites, though, are the Katakamuna moji, allegedly invented and used by the antediluvian Katakamuna civilization, which is in turn attested in the Katakamuna documents, which were probably fabricated by some joker in the Edo period before being discovered by NARASAKI Kōgetsu in 1949, allegedly through the agency of a mysterious man named HIRA Tōji, who claimed to be a representative of Katakamuna Shrine, the existence of which remains to be demonstrated.

It seems this guy wasn't the only one who thought this was an amusing story; a Playstation 2 RPG was made around the premise of a trip to ancient Katakamuna.

http://ds.gwn.com/games/gameinfo.php/id/37914/platform/playstation2/title/Katakamuna_Ushinawareta_Ingaritsu.html

Primary sources

Inscriptions

Most kamiyo moji documented by Ochiai and Atsutane were found on stray bones, clay pots, etc. Often careful examination, e.g. taking the pot into a back room or tracing over invisible lines, could bring out the kamiyo moji.

1775 秀真伝 Hotsuma Tsutae

Hotsuma Tsutae is a book written in 10,000 lines of yamato-kotoba. It is rather notable for two reasons: first, it presents a much more coherent narrative than other kamiyo moji texts, and second, it is the only text for which a predecessor to the printed edition could be found. It was discovered in 1830 and printed in 1884, but unlike the other texts, the "discovery" was not a mere forgery. After 20th century research, it was established that the oldest authentic manuscript is from 1775.

The origin is claimed be a poem of 28 chapters from the 600s BCE and 12 more chapters from the 1st century CE. This is an eyebrow-raising statement (scholarly consensus is that the Japanese did not develop writing until after Chinese characters were imported), but the work of Yoshinosuke Matsumoto pushes the Hotsuma Tsutae firmly into the category of possible alternative histories. His work is summarized in the English publication The Hotsuma Legends.

1800s? Misha Shinjikai

An obvious forgery written in ahiru moji.

1888? 美社神字録

http://homepage3.nifty.com/utukusinomori/index.html

An ancient novel called Utsukushinomori. Okay, I'm going to be honest, I don't have a clue what that website is about. I think 落合直澄 is responsible for this, although he claims to only be the translator.

Secondary sources

1819 神字日文傳

This is by the famous Kokugaku mystic Hirata Atsutane. He lists 13 sets of kamiyo moji which he obtained from esoteric sources. His book was roundly criticized even in his own time.

1888 日本古代文字考

http://shii.org/b/gbkkyv

This is a book by a Shinto priest named Naozumi Ochiai 落合直澄 containing 12 sets of kamiyo moji. It was published by Ise Shrine and has a foreword from the Grand Priest.

Links

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