Nakayama Miki

In this Japanese name, the surname is Nakayama.
Nakayama Miki
Image from Pictorial History of Modern Japan (Vol. 2) by Sanseidō
Born18 April 1798 (2 June)
Sanmaiden Village, Japan (currently Tenri)[1]
Died26 January 1887(1887-01-26) (aged 88)
Shoyashiki Village, Japan (currently Tenri)
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Nakayama Miki (中山 みき, 18 April 1798 – 26 January 1887 by the Japanese calendar[a]) was a nineteenth-century Japanese farmer and religious leader. She is the primary figure of the Japanese new religion Tenrikyo. Followers, who refer to her as Oyasama (おやさま), believe that she was settled as the Shrine of Tsukihi from the moment she experienced a divine revelation in 1838 until her death in 1887.

Upon her divine revelation, she gave away most of her family's possessions and dismantled the family's house, thereby entering a state of poverty.[2] She began to attract followers, who believed that she was a living goddess who could heal people and bless expectant mothers with safe childbirth.[3] To leave a record of her teachings, she composed the Ofudesaki and taught the lyrics, choreography and music of the Service, which have become Tenrikyo's scripture and liturgy respectively.[4] She identified what she claimed to be the place where God created human beings and instructed her followers to mark the place with a pillar and perform the liturgy around it, which she believed would advance humankind toward the salvific state of the Joyous Life.[5] In the last several years of her life, she and her followers were arrested and detained a number of times by the Japanese authorities for forming a religious group without official authorization.[6] A year after her death, Tenrikyo Church Headquarters received official authorization to be a church under the Shinto Main Bureau.[7]

Tenrikyo doctrine maintains that Nakayama Miki was the fulfillment of God's promise to humankind at creation, which was that after a certain number of years had elapsed, God would be revealed through the soul of the mother of humankind at the place of creation and inform humankind of its origins, purpose, and means of salvation.[8] Doctrine also maintains that as the Shrine of God, Nakayama's words and actions were in complete accordance with the divine will and that upon her death, her soul withdrew from physical existence and became everliving.

  1. ^ van Straelen 1954, p. 15.
  2. ^ Ellwood 1982, p. 41.
  3. ^ Ellwood 1982, p. 42.
  4. ^ Ellwood 1982, pp. 44–9.
  5. ^ Ellwood 1982, p. 48.
  6. ^ Ellwood 1982, pp. 47–50.
  7. ^ Ellwood 1982, pp. 54–5.
  8. ^ Tenrikyo Church Headquarters 1993, pp. 20–28.


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