Suwa clan
The Suwa clan, also known as the Miwa clan was a Japanese clan hailing from the area encompassing Lake Suwa in Shinano Province. Originally a family of priests who served at the Suwa Grand Shrine, by the Kamakura period it thrived as a prominent warrior clan with close ties to the shogunate.
Surviving the fall of both the Kamakura shogunate and the Southern Imperial Court which it supported, its feud with local rival clans, and frequent clashes with its neighbor in Kai, the Takeda clan, during the Sengoku period, the clan split into two branches by the Edo period: one ruling the Suwa Domain of Shinano as daimyō, with the other continuing to serve as priests of Suwa Grand Shrine.
Ancestry
Although the Suwa clan, who were the high priests of one of the component shrines of Suwa Grand Shrine, traditionally regarded themselves to be the descendants of the shrine's deity, Suwa Daimyōjin, the clan's actual historical origins are shrouded in mystery.While the Kojiki portrays Takeminakata as a son of the god Ōkuninushi driven to exile in Suwa after his defeat at the hands of a messenger sent by the gods of heaven to claim the land held by his father in the name of the goddess Amaterasu, other myths regarding the god of Suwa Shrine portray him in a different light. In some stories, Suwa Daimyōjin is a conqueror who subdued a number of local deities, one of them being the god Moreya, who is subsequently said to have become the ancestor of the Moriya clan, one of the priestly families who served the Suwa lineage of high priests. In another myth, the god is a being with no physical form who chose an eight-year-old boy to become his priest and living incarnation.
Although this boy, who is said to have been the founding ancestor of the clan, is traditionally claimed to be a semi-legendary priest from the Heian period named Arikazu, one genealogical record of the Suwa clan discovered in 1884 portrays Arikazu as a descendant of an earlier priest named Kumako. Seemingly corroborating this information is a genealogy of the Aso clan of Aso Shrine in Kyushu, in which Kumako, also named Otoei, is recorded as a son of the Yamato-appointed provincial governor of Shinano Province during the time of Emperor Yōmei, Mase-gimi, a.k.a. Iotari. Recent reappraisals of these two genealogies, however, have cast doubt on their authenticity and reliability as historical sources.
Apart from these candidates, the clan has also been claimed to descend from the Seiwa Genji via Minamoto no Mitsuyasu.
The Suwa ''Ōhōri''
In antiquity, the Suwa clan produced the Upper Shrine of Suwa's high priest known as the Ōhōri, who was worshiped as the living avatar of the shrine's deity during his period in office.The Ōhōri, who traditionally assumed the position at a young age, was assisted by five priests headed by the Jinchōkan of the Moriya clan, who oversaw the Upper Shrine's religious rituals, many of which are centered around the worship of agricultural and fertility god called Mishaguji. The Jinchōkan was believed to have the prerogative to summon the Mishaguji onto individuals and objects whenever its presence was called for.
Though officially the Upper Shrine's chief priest and as incarnate deity, an object of worship, the Suwa Ōhōri had little, if any, actual power over the shrine's affairs, which rested in the hands of the Moriya Jinchōkan, with his unique relationship to the Mishaguji and his knowledge of closely guarded secret traditions passed down via word of mouth only to the heir to the office. In fact, it was due to the Jinchōkan summoning the Mishaguji onto the Ōhōri during the investiture ceremony that the latter became a living deity.
Investiture ceremony
The full rite of investiture into the office of Ōhōri as practiced in the late medieval period involved the candidate first undergoing a twenty-two day period of strict ritual purification in the Maemiya, one of the Upper ShrineInside this enclosure, the Jinchōkan dressed the boy in full ritual attire: traditional makeup, a dull yellow-green sokutai, a hakama, and a crown. The Jinchōkan then summoned the Mishaguji to the kanameishi via secret incantations. Via the rock, the Mishaguji was then believed to enter the child's body, thereby turning him into a living god.
After being consecrated, the Ōhōri visited the various shrines of the Upper Shrine complex. In another shrine in the Maemiya area, the Uchi-no-mitama-den, wherein was kept the sacred treasures of the Upper Shrine that were supposedly brought to the region by Suwa Daimyōjin himself, the Ōhōri made a ritual declaration that he has become the god's new 'body' and will henceforth avoid impurity.
As time went on the ritual became increasingly simplified and later, was supposedly even omitted altogether, with the ōhōri simply assuming the position without any ceremony.
Role
During his term, the incumbent Ōhōri was treated as the physical manifestation of Suwa Daimyōjin. In 1186, Minamoto no Yoritomo officially recognized the Ōhōri as the god's incarnation in a letter to his subordinates, declaring that the ŌhōriThe Ōhōri was expected to live a life of ritual purity and was also forbidden to step outside the boundaries of Suwa region under pain of divine punishment.
During his term of office, the Ōhōri originally resided in a building near the Suwa Maemiya known as the Gōdono. Reflecting its being the residence of an incarnate deity, the Maemiya area and its vicinity was known during the Middle Ages as the Gōbara, the 'god's field'.
Should an incumbent Ōhōri die while in office, his corpse was immediately brought before the Uchi-no-mitama-den where he was ceremonially retired - the idea being that the Ōhōri
By the early 17th century, the Ōhōri
History
From the Heian period to the Sengoku period
In the meantime, other male members of the clan aside from the ōhōri - who cannot step outside the boundaries of the region, as well as come into contact with sources of impurity such as the flesh and blood of men or horses - began to pursue military careers.One of the first recorded warriors from the clan was Tamenaka, a son of then ōhōri Tamenobu. Tamenaka served under Minamoto no Yoshiie during the Zenkunen War under the orders of his father, who could not participate himself due to his priestly status. He then also served again under Yoshiie in the later Gosannen War of the 1080s, this time despite opposition from his family due to him already inheriting the position of ōhōri from Tamenobu in the interim between the two wars. Tamenaka's eventual suicide out of shame after his subordinates had a violent quarrel with Minamoto no Yoshimitsu's men during a feast held by the latter was considered to be divine punishment for his violation of the ban.
Due to the circumstances of his father's death, Tamenaka's son, Tamemori did not inherit the office of ōhōri, it instead passing in succession to Tamenaka's three younger brothers, two of whom died within mere days of their investiture. It would be the youngest brother, Tamesada, who would turn out to successfully pass down the priesthood to his progeny.
By the Kamakura period, the clan - now renowned as being both a priestly and a warrior clan - rose to national prominence as vassals of the shogunate and later, flourished greatly under the patronage of the Hōjō clan. The clan's fortunes waned with the fall of the Kamakura shogunate and the defeat of the Southern Imperial Court during the Nanboku-chō period.
During the Muromachi period, the Suwa were involved both in a feud with the Kanasashi clan of the Shimosha which supported the Northern Court, and interclan strife between the head family and the ōhōri-ke, a branch of the clan that had come to assume the priestly duties. With the defeat of the Kanasashi and the head family's reattainment of the position of ōhori, the clan became a regional power, clashing with the Takeda clan - originally their allies - during the Sengoku period. The clan again suffered a setback with Suwa Yorishige's defeat in the hands of Takeda Shingen in 1542 and with his suicide in 1544, the extinction of the main family; his cousin Yoritada, who succeeded Yorishige's younger brother Yoritaka as ōhōri, was spared. After the Takeda was destroyed by an alliance of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu, Yoritada allied himself with the latter, who eventually reinstated Yoritada in his family domain in 1601.
Edo period onwards
Yoritada's eldest son, Yorimizu became the first daimyō to rule Suwa Domain, with the office of ōhōri passing down to his fourth son, Yorihiro. With this, the clan effectively split into two branches: the daimyō line and the ōhōri line. To distinguish themselves from the daimyō line, the priestly line altered one of the Chinese characters of their surname.All in all, ten generations served as daimyō of Suwa Domain until the abolition of the han system during the Meiji period.
Meanwhile, the establishment of State Shinto abolished the tradition of hereditary succession among Shinto priesthood, including that of Suwa Grand Shrine. Local clans such as the Suwa lost control of the shrine's traditional priestly offices as government appointees began to manage the shrine, which passed under state control.
The last Suwa ōhōri, the fifteenth since Yorihiro, died in 2002 with no heirs.