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On Magatsukami: A Few Noragami Thoughts

Dated: August 7, 2021

Imagine being me, minding my own business on a Saturday night and doing absolutely nothing Noragami research-related, when I read the following sentence on a random page on the Fatal Frame wikia:

In Japanese mythology, Magatsuhi-no-kami were kami of disorder and misfortune that were created when Izanagi, returning from the underworld (Yomi), performed Misogi to purify himself.

You mean my efforts to research magatsukami (禍津神 magatsukami) in mythology were unsuccessful because the name is spelled differently (禍津日神 magatsuhi no kami)?! Literally one kanji difference! Adachitoka’s so sneaky!

Anyway, explanation and thoughts ahead.

Magatsukami & Magatsuhi-no-Kami

As we all know by now, the term magatsukami 禍津神 in Noragami carries the meaning of a god of calamity - gods that bring disaster and misfortune to humans by being near them. The word is composed of the following kanji:

禍 meaning “calamity, misfortune, evil, curse”

津 meaning “haven, port, ferry, harbor”

神 meaning kami, a Shinto deity/spirit

Yato has been the deity that’s been most consistently described as a magatsukami in the series so far, mostly by Father; although it should be noted that Kagatsuchi remarked in Chapter 65 that Bishamon has the potential to become a magatsukami herself:

“[Bishamonten] is a great evil. If we allow her to live, she will become a [magatsukami], hunting the head of thousands.”

Most of the perspectives on gods of calamity have come from Father himself, who is obviously a very biased source. He has this to say on Yato’s nature as a god:

You’re one of those ‘necessarily evils’, Yaboku. No, that’s not the right expression. An essential ecological phenomenon... death that promotes life. [...] In other words, you’re the invisible hand of nature. (Chapter 44, Volume 12)

They also seem to be the gods that “take” as Father describes them several times leading up to and after the Sakura flashbacks:

“Yaboku is one of those gods who takes. Just being near him is enough to bring someone disaster.” (Chapter 40, Volume 11)

“Let me make this one thing very clear. Everything that’s about to happen, is happening because you met Yaboku. Remember, he’s one of the gods that takes way.” (Chapter 48, Volume 13)

“He’s one of the gods that takes away. He’ll take your family, your future, all of it. And you... will lose everything.” (Chapter 50, Volume 13)

Like I mentioned above, magatsuhi-no-kami is written in an almost identical way to magatsukami, with the addition of the character 日 hi, usually meaning day but can also mean sun, Japan in general, or divine spirit. Exactly like the magatsukami of Noragami, the magatsuhi-no-kami are spirits which brings about pollution, disaster, and misfortune who belong to the land of Yomi (and we’ll get to that in a second), leading me to believe they are probably the same concept with a slightly different spelling.

Here’s where things get interesting.

In Japanese mythology, the magatsuhi-no-kami were born from Izanagi while he was performing a purification ritual (misogi, which shares a name with shinki ablution in the Noragami series) to cleanse himself of the pollution (kegare) of Yomi. Some sources are a little unclear on how many gods exactly were born from this - some make it seem like it was many gods, while Japanese Wiki Corpus specifies it to be either one or two gods:

In the Kojiki, the magatsuhi-no-kami are two gods, Yasomagatsuhi-no-kami and Omagatsuhi-no-kami.

In the Nihon Shoki, it is just the Yasomagatsuhi-no-kami and possibly Oayatsuhi-no-kami (oaya meaning “great disaster.”).

In either version, after the magatsuhi-no-kami is/are born, Naobi-no-kami and Izunome - deities of purification and removal of calamities, changing misfortune to fortune - are likewise born from Izanagi to fix the disasters caused by the gods of calamity.

Now, wait a damn minute. So the magatsuhi-no-kami and the Naobi-kami were deities born during Izanagi’s purification after coming out of Yomi...? Now, that sure sounds... familiar.

That’s right, dear readers, Noragami is once again a circle: who could it be but Father, the only human character who came out of Yomi to tell the tale? I sure as hell did a double take when I read the words “kami of misfortune” together with “created when Izanagi, returning from the underworld (Yomi), performed Misogi to purify himself.”

Okay, there’s just... no damn way this is a coincidence. No way. Adachitoka must know about the origins of the magatsuhi-no-kami (and the Naobi-kami but more on that in a second), creating Father - specifically someone who came out from Yomi - and Yato, his god-son, in resemblance to the myth.

This opens about twenty cans of worms, and finally established a solid starting point for a question that I have been asking myself for a very long time: How exactly was Yato wished into existence by Father, from a single strong wish? Perhaps, just maybe, the thing that some people argued would make it implausible for Yato to have been born from Father’s wish - the fact that his return from Yomi rendered him no longer fully human - is the very thing that enabled it to happen in the first place?

Could it have been from the purification process after returning from Yomi? Or maybe with the help of the Brush - not Father forcing another name on an already existing, reincarnated god, but by using the Brush as a catalyst for the manifestation of Father’s wish in some way, since Yato was born after Mizuchi had been named with the Brush?

Now, if you are a regular on this blog, you might have read Part 1-1 and Part 1-2 of the “Father: true desires, projection theory, and other related thoughts” meta, in which I discuss Father’s wish:

I believe this is the heart of Father’s original desire, the “one wish he’s been able to wish in his entire life”: a world where people are not as rotten as Father now perceives them to be and gods are as dedicated to the well-being of humanity as they are supposed to be.

Could this conclusion be congruent with this myth? Could Yato be something other than a magatsukami?

Well.

As it has been mentioned earlier, magatsuhi-no-kami were not the only gods born from Izanagi’s purification: immediately following them was the Naobi-kami, a deity that is supposed to reverse misfortunes and calamities, the second side of the coin that were the magatsuhi-no-kami. Here I must point out that Father’s issue with Heaven seems to be exactly that they treat human lives with such carelessness - and the fact that Lady Pockmarks specifically died in a natural disaster, very heavily implied to be the result of the actions of a god.

As I said in the meta, the fact that Yato seems to be a god who specifically cares so much about the lives of humanity feels incredibly important. As much of strife Father undoubtedly saw and experienced by the “gods who take”, perhaps it is possible that Yato is something closer to the Naobi-kami, deities who reverse disasters to balance out the destruction of the magatsuhi-no-kami.

Also, from the Japanese Wiki Corpus:

“Norinaga MOTOORI believed Magatsuhi no kami is an evil god. According to Norinaga, Magatsuhi no kami is the cause of absurdity in life. In this world, people's weals and woes do not necessarily occur reasonably. He claimed that it is the works of Magatsuhi no kami that causes people living in good faith to not necessarily be blessed with happiness. He says, 'Magatsuhi no kami has a harsh spirit, and it is very sad, but there is nothing to be done.' ("Naobinomitama").”

Hmm. Hmmmm.

For now, I have nothing else to add, but I hope you all found this as good food for thought.

In conclusion: