八百万の神様 (Yaoyorozu-no-Kamisama)

15th March – 弥生

八百万(Yaoyorozu) = heaps, a lot and different. The actual meaning is the number of 8,000,000. Here implies not the actual number but so many. There are a lot of various different gods exist in Japan.

From the old time in Japan, Japanese have lived with nature, mountain, ocean, river, forest and so on. They cultivated rice field, went for fishing… Since then, people started believing all the natural phenomenon were caused by gods. Moreover, people felt gods on natural objects too.

Japanese have been believing not only natures, but also seeing gods in toilet, or even one piece of rice! Seems like almost everything have gods.

Nowadays, Japan has variety of different gods, gods of study, gods of relationship, gods of business.

In every October of Lunar calendar (Around November – December), all the gods gather in Izumo, Shimane prefecture. In this assembly, all the gods hold the conference to talk about the next year’s harvest, people’s relationships etc. The another name of November is known as 神無月 (Kannazuki) in Japan, meaning of no gods month. However, in Izumo area, it is called 神有月 (Kamiarizuki), meaning of gods exist month. This is because all the gods gather there in this months so other prefectures does not have gods during this time.

Japan believes 八百万の神様, so normally Japanese does not have specific god to believe. This diversity of belief is the reason that Japanese go to different shrines to worship different gods.