Ebisu Drift-Arrival Legend

The Ebisu drift-arrival tradition is a coastal foundation story of villages that enshrine a deity who drifted in from beyond the sea as Ebisu. The Nishinomiya Shrine tradition in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, holds that villagers fishing in the shallows lifted a sacred image caught in their net and reverently enshrined it. From the medieval period the deity was identified with Hiruko-no-Kami, whom Izanagi-no-Kami and Izanami-no-Kami of the Kojiki's divine-birth segment first gave birth to and set adrift in a reed boat because his legs did not stand. The tradition that the drifted Hiruko came at last to the shore of Nishinomiya became established. Fishing villages took the figure as god of bountiful catch and safe sailing, and merchant houses as god of prosperous trade, joining two strands of belief. The story is in three stages: the drift from a maritime other-world (connection with the Hiruko tradition), the recovery and enshrining by villagers, and the deity's fixing as guardian of both sea and market. The Kojiki, upper scroll, divine-birth segment (Hiruko set adrift, 712 CE), the Nihon Shoki, divine age book one fourth section, the medieval Nishinomiya Daimyojin Engi, the Shinto-shu, and the Shintenei-shu form the textual basis. The Kojiki-den of Motoori Norinaga gives a long commentary.