Do you know the meaning of the golden thing Sayo killed Tokimaro with, and the state of his body when it was found? I'm not very knowledgeable of Shinto, but considering that thing's location in the shrine, I assumed it was some kind of sacred object, and the sitting position behind a veil of Tokimaro's corpse gives me feeling of something that has some significance which I cannot see due to lack of cultural context. Either way, thanks in advance!
Hello!
I will try to be succint and stay as related to Genazo as possible as to not make a long unnecessary lecture, but of course I recommend using notions mentioned in this post as a start for your own research!
The Ryuga's religious practices are fictional, and don't correspond entirely to anything in real life as far as I know. However, it seems to take inspiration from various different traditions from different era and regions.
(for example, when Tokisada talks about transfering his soul at the end of the movie, he specifically uses the word mabui to refer to the soul, which is Ryukyu dialect, from Okinawa.)
In the pamphlet, there is a page dedicated to props that I scanned here. The golden spear Sayo used to kill Tokimaro is featured as simply "the sacred spear".
In shinto, the main building of a shrine is called the honden, and is a room closed to the public (except during some festivals) where the local kami is enshrined, residing in vessels known as goshintai.
When these vessels are man-made, it's often in the shape of mirrors, swords/spears, and then comma-shaped jewels called magatama, statues, tools, and such, each with their own symbolism and significance. Sometimes, goshintai are natural, with kami residing in rocks, trees, mountains, people, etc.
The shrine atop the mountain in Nagura Village thus features a mirror and a golden spear as its objects of worship :
(ironic when Sayo herself ended up being yorishiro, the object capable of attracting a kami within itself)
Again, this is fiction, the history of the Ryuga and the identity of the deity they worship is left ambiguous on purpose. So don't take anything I'll say in this paragraph as word of god, of course.
It's something I had already mentioned in a previous post, but there's something interesting going on with the script when Katsunori mentions the shrine : he calls the local deity simply as what one would hear and interpret as "土俗の神 (dozoku no kami)", "Local deity". But the japanese subtitles from Amazon Prime reads the homonym "土属の神 (dozoku no kami)" instead, changing the meaning to "a god of the earth". If it's not a mistake, it gives a crucial information about what kind of kami is enshrined here, and if the Kyokotsu in the well cause earthquakes in the village, it would make sense for the Ryuga and villagers to worship a earth-related deity for protection, doesn't it?
A relevant spear in shinto would be the Ame-no-nuboko, the Heavenly jeweled spear used by Izanagi and Izanami to raise the earth out of the sea and create the islands that would make up Japan. Maybe a spear was chosen for the deity of Nagura, who seem to be called Nagura-sama by some of the men present during Tokisada's succession, because of its relation to the earth in the context of shinto.
The skewered rabbits are of course, offerings, and seem to be inspired by the cult of deities worshipped in the Suwa shrines of Nagano prefecture, including Mishaguji, a deity of uncertain origins. One of the oldest religious festival held in Suwa is called Onto festival, where 75 deer heads are offered to the local gods, amongst others animals. Nowadays, it seems the ritual has been simplified to only using a single stuffed deer head.
Many high-ranking priests at Suwa belong to the Moriya family, which has maintained local worship for generations and has opened the Jinchokan Moriya Museum, collecting documents, artefacts, and recreations of objects of worship related to Suwa shrines.
Again, the story of the Ryuga is fictional, but I am confident this museum has served as inspiration for the Genazo team, one of the exhibit of the museum being clearly referenced in the movie. (timestamp: 8:51)
By the way, remember Otome calling the quakes caused by Kyokotsu "ryukoku", or "dragon's wail"? Suwa Myojin, one of the two main gods of Suwa Temple, is sometimes represented as a snake or a dragon!
The movie is deliberately ambiguous about all this - but when you dig into Suwa's history, and link it with the lore established in Gegege no Nazo, it's easy to imagine the Ryuga as a family who has been dedicated to religious worship for generations, before their focus switched to pharmacology most probably during the Meiji era.
Finally, I am not sure about the position of Tokimaro's corpse. It looks like to me a dramatic staging that evokes the Heian aristocracy hiding behind screens as depicted in say, the Tale of Genji ; but being hidden under a screen is, as far as I know, something reserved to women. Then again, I think Tokimaro is feminized in many ways, but it might just be me reading too much into it.
EDIT: unless this staging is supposed to evoke Sayo being the one behind the screen ; when Tokimaro's corpse falls on top of Nezumi Otoko, it evokes his final moment as he attempts to, well, tear through Sayo's modesty.
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