Jinja-hime (Saga)

Jinja-hime is a prophecy-creature (yogenju) said to have appeared on the sea off Hizen (now Karatsu, Saga) in Bunsei 2 (1819). The figure is described with a human face, horns, long hair, and a fish-like lower body close to a mermaid, said to have foretold a good harvest and a coming plague, and to have promised that any who looked upon a depiction of her form would be spared from plague before vanishing into the sea. The figure stands within the late-Edo prophecy-creature lineage alongside Amabie and Kudan. The canonical narrative places Jinja-hime on the coast of Matsuura-gun, Hizen, in Bunsei 2, where she identified herself as a messenger from the Dragon Palace, foretold seven years of good harvest and a coming plague, and promised that those who showed her image would be spared the plague before vanishing. The figure was widely circulated in Edo-period broadsides (surimono) and kawaraban as a related prophecy-creature. Edo-period broadsides and kawaraban (including the Kikai Shusetsu), Yumoto Koichi's Nihon Genju Zusetsu and other modern prophecy-creature studies, and Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) systematize the figure. The Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database also records the case. Adjacent prophecy-creatures of the Bunsei-Kaei period include Amabie (Higo Province), Kudan (various regions), and Umide-bito; all share the apotropaic function of "looking on the image to avoid the plague." With the Amabie revival of the 2020s, Jinja-hime has also been renoticed.