#shintou

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Miko in the Touhou universe is meant to be an alternate version of Shoutoku that secretly practised Taoism, rejecting both Buddhism and Shintou in the 6th century AD, a time when Japanese society was divided along the lines of those two religions as part of a civil war and Shoutoku himself became famous as a military leader of said civil war who brought Buddhism to Japan.

I found that Miko fully embracing Taoism and practising Taoist arts to attain immortality could be related to a desire to be her own person and grow, not only above herself, but also above all the myths surrounding Shoutoku and all the interpretations others made about his life story and his feats. In turn, this resonates with Miko's characterisation as a canon transgender female character in Touhou, including her decision to use her reincarnation as a shikaisen to undergo a complete magic-powered gender reassignment therapy.

Moreover, I have a headcanon that one of the reasons why Miko is rejecting Buddhism so ardently is because it's a reminder of what she used to be perceived as in her previous life, the identity imposed on her that she's trying to escape from. Now, it doesn't need to be this way, and besides, neither Byakuren Hijiri nor any of her followers at Myouren Temple has any idea that this is going on in Miko's mind. This makes her situation all the more tragic.

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However, Shoutoku's ties to Buddhism are still a fundamental –even inescapable– part of Miko's very self, due to the whole thing about belief being what fuels the existence of Gensoukyou and its inhabitants (or at least, those inhabitants of Gensoukyou who aren't people from the Human Village).

She's not just vaguely based on the historical figure of Shoutoku and the various tales surrounding him, but she's heavily inspired by one specific version: Guze Kannon, the interpretation of Shoutoku as a messianic reincarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion Avalokiteśvara (Guān Yīn in Chinese, Kannon in Japanese), according to the devotional cult that developed around the Crown Prince for a while since a century after his death (as pointed out by @sorcerorsutrascroll here: https://sorcerorsutrascroll.tumblr.com/post/618837241216843776).

Now, it should be possible for Miko to conciliate Taoism, whose teachings she openly follows at present and secretly followed in her past life, with Buddhism, whose principles she only publicly adhered to as Shoutoku in the past but still partly define her very existence in her present life as part of Gensoukyou; after all, Shingon and other Japanese Esoteric schools of Buddhism were greatly influenced by Taoism, as pointed out by @just9art in this post [https://just9art.tumblr.com/post/793045036761858048] (by the way, Esoteric Buddhism in general and Shingon in particular also seem to be the branch of Buddhism with the most influence in general Touhou world-building, in comparison to more "conventional" Mahāyāna schools such as Zen), and Shoutoku himself used the Seven-Star Sword, a relic associated with Taoism (and the ceremonial sword where Miko placed her soul for her reincarnation process). Doing this conciliation between both religions might even help Miko personally in both her pursuit of immortality and the reaffirmation of her identity; after all, as pointed out in the post from earlier by @sorcerorsutrascroll, the Sūtra of Instructions of the Taintless Flame (on which Shoutoku is even said to have written commentary) teaches there isn't any inherent or fundamental difference or separation between man and woman (understanding this can be used as a path towards rejecting the gender binary as a supposedly undeniable and inescapable biological truth, understanding gender as a spectrum, and all this stuff that queer studies scholars independently figured out again since the 1970s).

However, if Miko's motivation to choose Taoism includes seeking to –as described earlier– be her own person, grow beyond her old Shoutoku persona and surpass all the ideas and interpretations people assigned to and projected on her as Shoutoku, then she'd never do any of these things to follow Taoism and Buddhism at the same time, or even entertain the idea of admitting Buddhism is right about something. As I mentioned earlier, this makes Miko's attitude even more tragic because (as seen in this post [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/697974519511515136] by @sweetescapeartist –and my Spanish translation of it– about Krillin overcoming his PTSD by attaining enlightenment in the Dragon Ball Super anime) Buddhism can also be a path to grow beyond your own limitations and healing from past traumas, something that would align a lot with Miko's personal goals.

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On top of all this, aside from the Taoist and Buddhist facets of Miko, there's also a Shintou facet at play. Well... The issue here isn't really Shintou as a whole, but a very specific (and relatively recent) part of it: the Heavenly Kami, and more precisely, the Japanese Imperial Cult, which focused a lot on the Heavenly Kami as a source of authority. This is because, in the Touhou universe, Miko still has a connection to the Lunarians.

Shoutoku played a vital role in the arrival of Buddhism in Japan, and Miko currently follows Taoism; however, Shoutoku was still a key member of the Japanese imperial family, and Miko insists on using the title of Crown Prince. The imperial family always claimed to be direct descendants of the Heavenly Kami; even with all the changes in their relationship with religions other than Shintou (for example: in the 6th and 7th century, they were accepting and even promoting Buddhism; more than a millenium later, in the late 19th century, Emperor Meiji ordered a strict separation between Shintou and Buddhism, invented an alleged reconstruction of the "original" Shintou that was supposedly "free of all foreign influence", and declared this "State Shintou" as the Japanese nation's new official religion), these claims of divine ancestry remained a constant throughout the imperial family's entire history, and it's logical to assume this belief also applied to Shoutoku back when he lived.

In the Touhou universe, the Lunarians see themselves as the Heavenly Kami, and the Lunar Capital's feelings of superiority and obsession with purity are mirroring –in a very direct and unsubtle way– the mix of bigotry, xenophobia, extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism that defined the Japanese Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and has never truly gone away after that) and was the ideological basis for policies such as the creation of State Shintou and the Buddhism-Shintou separation ordered by Emperor Meiji.

Let's go back to Miko. After she had grown to sincerely respect Byakuren and had been willing to team up with her in Touhou 15.5, Miko stopped appearing in new games and only kept showing up in official print works. In said print works, she started being portrayed around 2016 as someone who not only strangely believes in a firm separation between Japanese and other East Asian religions that used to be very intermingled and syncretised for over a dozen centuries, but also has got what I could only describe as a "human-supremacist streak" (Aya might have exaggerated this in the article about her in Alternative Facts in Eastern Utopia, but quite a few things Miko said afterwards kind of proved in retrospect that Aya was correct by accident about this one thing).

In a similar way to how Reimu Hakurei behaved a bit more like the Lunarians for a long while in the 2010s in a desperate attempt to fulfill the duties of a traditional shrine maiden [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/809576855521853440], it's possible that the Meiji-era fanaticism embodied by the Lunar Capital started to affect Miko's personality as well, via the belief that the Lunarians are Shoutoku's divine ancestors and Miko –both as a reincarnation of Shoutoku and as the Crown Prince she still claims to be– should follow their example.

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It'd be fantastic to see a story where Miko's own character arc comes to a close in the context of Gensoukyou's conflict with the Lunarians. This could have the many facets of her personality fighting against each other, and I can think of two different ways this could go: one of them is those facets taking their own separate forms in the physical plane, with Miko having to put all of them under control and reunite with them; the other possibility is that the clash between Miko's self and all these components of her identity stays in her mind and she starts physically and mentally deteriorating as a side-effect. Miko would eventually end this inner conflict and overcome this crisis with advice from all of her friends, which provides her with perspective and helps her fully discover herself and figure out what she really is:

Soga no Tojiko and Mononobe no Futo. Both of them embarked on the same journey to attain immortality. Futo's point of view in particular would be interesting to explore: aside from her having originally been a follower of Shintou, there's the fact that she's so loyal to Miko but also used to be the first one to propose attacking the Myouren Temple, and this kind of animosity towards Buddhism is what Miko would need to abandon.

Byakuren, along with the Myouren Temple crew. Given what I've described about the possible connection between Miko's rejection of Buddhism and her issues with her past life as someone different, I imagine this conversation would be the most emotional since it'd require unpacking all that baggage she's been bottling; it'd also be rather ironic if Miko, someone worshipped at one point as a living deity of mercy, was the one on the receiving end of said mercy.

Reimu and/or someone from the Moriya Shrine, most likely Kanako. This would be important because it'd show what Shintou has always been at a fundamental level, what it literally was before becoming an organised/institutional national religion for Japan: a form of Animism, a belief system that focuses on respecting, appreciating and connecting with the essence of nature, the universe we live in and all its interconnected elements (the definition of the Kami –in singular– in its most basic interpretation, and also the basis for the Earthly Kami –in plural– such as Suwa Myoujin, whose lore is the inspiration for Kanako and Suwako), regardless of any big complicated family tree of heavenly beings with their own wills or personal goals. The conversation with Kanako would be relevant, not only due to the question of the interaction between religions (Kanako's father/grandfather Oukuninushi was syncretised with the Buddhist deity Daikokuten; a bit more about that here [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/809375294976851968] and here [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/808569429877227520]), but also because she initially became a kami after being born as a human (something not too different from Miko and her fellow Taoists becoming shikaisen) and now seeks to become a kami of innovation, which could also inspire Miko; Suwako, as a native god, would also help pointing out what I've just described about the Animist roots of Shintou. As for Reimu, I've already talked about her in that post I linked earlier about her portrayal in the 2010s: after the events of Touhou 19 & 20 and Whispered Oracle of Hakurei Shrine, she'd be in a good position to explain what Gensoukyou is about (acceptance, evolution, infinite possibilities) and that the Lunarians are dangerous due to how easy it is to start believing in their ideas and methods when things stop going well; we could even have Reimu thank Miko for indirectly helping her figure things out, as a callback to the ending of Symposium of Post-Mysticism when Miko found out about Reimu's true desire of being able to keep her friends and not having to fight youkai in order to keep Gensoukyou safe and in balance.

Maybe, Seiga Kaku. She taught Miko about Taoism in the first place, even though Seiga has always had her own plans and machinations going.

Maybe, someone from the Outside World. Ideally, this would be Sumireko Usami: not only is she the one human from the Outside World who still spends most of her time there, but I imagine she has quite a few strong opinions about current-day society in general and Japanese society in particular.

Maybe, Saki Kurokoma. In this context, it'd be a fantastic time for a Miko & Saki reunion.

At the end, there could be an epic final battle where Miko, helped by all the people who already gave her emotional support, fights either against an actual Lunarian or against a dark/corrupted version of Miko/Shoutoku who's loyal to the Lunar Capital (or even created by its leaders). Given that Byakuren would be the most likely to be involved in direct combat alongside Miko, and also that a Miko + Byakuren team-up would probably be the most thematically fitting for this story, we could use this combined arrangement of "Emotional Skyscraper ~ Cosmic Mind" and "Shoutoku Legend ~ True Administrator" by "Kyo-Sensei" as the final boss theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlmG7ypo_eA

Did George R.R. Martin reference Shintō mythology? Or:

Parallel between A Song of Ice and Fire and Shintō mythology

On the one hand, Daenerys walks into her husband's funeral pyre after having given birth not too long ago and the magic of maegi Mirri Maz Duur is said to have birthed the three little dragons that Daeny considers her children.

On the other hand, to prove her husband Ninigi that she is pregnant with his child, Konohana Sakuyabime employs the truth ritual ukehi (誓占) to lock herself up in a birthing hut and set it on fire when she is about to give birth. From the ashes she returns unharmed, together with her three newborn sons.

i should draw more than the like, 3 characters that i usually do

I had originally put all this together for a Reddit post, but now I've decided to post that here as well, even though almost all my sources are already from Tumblr. I'll also translate it all to Spanish.

I had posted this [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/792543572422524928] some months ago, proposing a way Sanae Kochiya's family tree could be drastically expanded by the events of Touhou 20, and all the funny fan-theorising and speculation on the Moriya Shrine's family dynamics within that post actually made me think even more about Kanako Yasaka and her exact relation with her mythological basis.

The inspiration for Kanako was the official lore of the Suwa Grand Shrine and its main deity, Suwa (Dai) Myoujin –the (Great) Deity of the Suwa region–, a title held by Takeminakata after defeating Moreya according to the legend. In turn, Takeminakata is usually placed in the Shintou pantheon's family tree as one of Oukuninushi's sons; more precisely, he's the younger brother of Kotoshironushi, one of the deities claimed as the divine ancestors of the Japanese imperial family. Takeminakata was married to Yasakatome, who was enshrined as a secondary deity at the Suwa Grand Shrine; to be more precise, Takeminakata is enshrined at the Upper Shrine of that whole shrine complex, whereas Yasakatome is at the Lower Shrine. However, there's not a lot of stuff about Yasakatome other than her marriage with Takeminakata, and out of those few bits of available info on her origin, we can't really point to one version and say it's the main one.

So, with how many elements have been pulled straight from the Suwa Myoujin lore to build both Kanako's backstory and her in-universe motivations, such as her dislike of the Lunarians referencing Takeminakata's failed attempt at defying the heavenly kami, it seems evident at first glance that she's meant to be (in typical Touhou fashion) a gender-swapped version of Takeminakata. The details recently revealed in Touhou 20 about Yuiman Asama being an old friend of Kanako seem to strengthen this idea a bit more, since Yuiman's backstory is pretty much a copy of the role of Princess Yuiman/Yuima in the legend of Kouga Saburou, which was meant to be an alternative origin story for Suwa Myoujin and whose titular character is supposed to be Takeminakata long before he was known for that name and deified & enshrined at Suwa.

The one big obstacle for the "Kanako = Takeminakata" idea is a little thing mentioned back in early 2009 and never referenced again: in one of the chapters of the official manga Silent Sinner in Blue, it's mentioned that Oukuninushi (interchangeably referred to as Oukuninushi and Daikoku, a Buddhist deity and one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, who ended up being "merged" with Oukuninushi as part of the Shin-Butsu Shuugou, the syncretism between Shintou and Buddhism) was sealed by the Lunarians at the Izumo Grand Shrine to ensure he couldn't rebel against them, it's suggested that Takeminakata was also sealed at the Moriya Shrine for the same reason, and that the Lunarians restrained them by using shimenawa (like the small circular one Kanako wears as a crown or tiara and the big circular one she carries on her back, and also the particularly thick one hanging at the door of the Moriya Shrine, which is itself inspired by the real-life autumn shrine of the Lower Shrine of Suwa).

Now, we could dismiss this as some stray piece of lore that was then immediately ignored and is doomed to be eventually overwritten/retconned in a later Touhou story written by ZUN (either a game or another print work like Silent Sinner in Blue), or we could argue that this story about Oukuninushi and Takeminakata might be in-universe misinformation, or that ZUN simply dropped this off somewhere during one of his regular trips to the Dangerous Drunk Dimension (seriously, explaining any contradiction in Touhou Project by merely saying "ZUN was drunk when he wrote that" feels like the equivalent of "Araki forgot" in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and I'm still not sure whether that would be amusing or aggravating). But any of these options would be boring, so let's proceed with the assumption that what was told in Silent Sinner in Blue can be taken at face value and is indeed canon in the way it was told in the text itself: Takeminakata is a character in Touhou Project and was imprisoned in the Moriya Shrine by the Lunarians.

If Takeminakata is currently still sealed within the Moriya Shrine (which reminds me a lot of Mima being sealed within the Hakurei Shrine in the PC-98 era, now that I think about it), then who and what is Kanako, given that she can go outside of the Moriya Shrine grounds and run around in Gensoukyou?

One of the options I considered is that Kanako is actually Yasakatome, albeit only two elements of Kanako are specific references to her: the surname "Yasaka" and the origin myth of the geyser at Shimosuwa, the latter being a possible but vague inspiration for the plot of Touhou 11 (there's also the Perfectly Clear Mirror that Kanako wears in her chest, but the original Suwa Myoujin myths say that it belonged to Takeminakata, and the only clue ponting to the mirror being Yasakatome's is the legend of Kouga Saburou, where Princess Kasuga originally owned a mirror; more details on Kasuga later). But I greatly doubt "Kanako = Yasakatome" is the answer now, for two main reasons:

The first one comes from an entirely out-of-universe perspective. When I said earlier that there's very little information about Yasakatome, that was an understatement: she's not even mentioned in the most comprehensive compilations of Japanese mythology, like the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki; the stories about the Suwa Grand Shrine do mention her but it's all about describing her relationship with Takeminakata and a little bit about her own role as the secondary god enshrined there, and since I've brought up the tale of Kouga Saburou earlier, that one doesn't clarify anything either and simply establishes that Princess Kasuga (whom Kouga Saburou was engaged in the first place and eventually married with) was the human deified alongside Takeminakata at Suwa and known under the name of Yasakatome after the events narrated in that legend. As such, creating a character based on her would require insane amounts of bibliographic research, and even if you were willing to take your braincells to the absolute limit while doing that research, it's very likely you'll eventually be forced to write the equivalent of your own fanfiction centred on a background character in the source material just so you can then pretend this fanfiction is totally authentic and base at least half of your character's lore on that (admittedly, it'd not be the first time or the only place where someone takes this apporach when making significant contributions to mythology; this was already done even more blatantly in Graeco-Roman mythology when Virgil wrote the Aeneid). Doing this much work for a character in something such as a Touhou game doesn't sound very practical, and even though ZUN has created other characters based on very obscure Japanese myths and folk tales, what was available about them is indeed barely known and hard to find for the general public but was still enough to make an entire Touhou character out of them (case in point, the aforementioned Yuiman Asama).

The second reason comes from the few things that are known about Yasakatome, and how much any of those bits of info clashes with both Takeminakata's lore and what was already established about Kanako in Touhou canon: there are two main accepted versions of Yasakatome's genealogy (none of them come from chronicles like the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, and they don't come from the official lore of the Suwa Grand Shrine either), and both of them would result in a Touhou version of Yasakatome being friendly towards the Lunarians rather than opposing them like Kanako. One version linked to the ancient sea-faring Azumi tribe (who originated on the island of Kyushu, pretty far from Lake Suwa in Nagano) claims that Yasakatome is one of the daughters of the sea deity Watatsumi, thus making her a sister of Toyotama-hime and Tamayori-hime; if Kanako was based on this, then she'd be straight-up a Lunarian and also a third Watatsuki sister along with Toyohime and Yorihime. A much more recent version (from the Edo period, which started around the year 1600) claims that Yasakatome is the daughter of a heavenly kami called Yasakahiko, who accompanied Nigihayahi when he descended from heaven.

The simplest (and probably most boring) explanation I can think of is that Kanako is the daughter of Takeminakata and Yasakatome. Any past or present romantic interaction between Kanako and Yuiman would get weird if this were the case (though it'd still be less weird than the fully literal incest in the heavenly kami's family tree, such as Tamayori-hime with her own biological nephew), but at least, it'd easily avoid the issues stemmed from Kanako and her portrayal seemingly contradicting what was revealed and/or is implied about Takeminakata and Yasakatome (with the Touhou version of the former being technically a prisoner within his own shrine and the Touhou version of the latter being probably a Lunarian).

Another possibility is that Kanako is Takeminakata and Yasakatome themselves, in a more literal sense, rather than being their offspring: if Takeminakata and Yasakatome were perceived and worshipped by their own followers as two facets of one kami that ruled over the Suwa region and was enshrined in the entire Suwa Grand Shrine, that belief could lead to both disappearing and being reborn as Kanako Yasaka, an amalgamation of them and an embodiment of the whole idea of a "great deity of the Suwa region"; this wouldn't be too difficult, given how little info on Yasakatome is available, how much she's remembered as merely Takeminakata's wife, and the fact that both the Upper and Lower Suwa Shrines each have buildings dedicated to both kami.

This would be contradicted by what was told in Silent Sinner in Blue about Takeminakata and what was figured out earlier in this post about Yasakatome's Lunarian connection, but that could be solved with a set of fan-theories proposed by @occasionaltouhou (and my own conclusions inspired by those theories) regarding the relation between the heavenly kami in Japanese mythology and the Lunarians in Touhou, Iwanaga-hime's possible role in Gensoukyou (at least before Ariya Iwanaga was introduced in Touhou 20), and the general concept of a kami being embodied by a physical object and partitioning its own spirit/essence so it can be worshipped from multiple separate places:

First of all, most if not all kami have a go-shintai –literally the "sacred body of a kami"–, a temporary repository of said kami's spirit; this go-shintai is usually kept in a private honden or "main hall", but some of the older shrines in Japan weren't built with a honden and the go-shintai of the kami to whom the shrine in question is dedicated is the shrine's high priest (back when that position was hederitary and in the hands of a priestly clan) and/or a pre-existing natural object. This is the case for the "mountain kami" such as the sisters Konohana-Sakuya-hime and Iwanaga-hime, linked respectively to Mount Fuji and the Yatsugatake mountain range; regarding the Touhou canon, Iwanaga-hime's relation to the Yatsugatake mountains inspired @occasionaltouhou's theory about her role in Gensoukyou [https://occasionaltouhou.tumblr.com/post/732913388035915776], since that mountain range is the location of Youkai Mountain, one of Gensoukyou's landmarks (probably the most important one). Suwa Myoujin also has several of these "natural go-shintai", including Mount Moriya behind the Upper Shrine's main shrine, a sacred rock known as iwakura in the main shrine itself, a burial mound in the Upper Shrine's old shrine that is believed to be the resting place of Takeminakata and Yasakatome, and a couple of sacred trees in the Lower Shrine; back when the members of the Suwa clan held the position of Ouhouri or high priest of the Suwa Grand Shrine, they were also revered as living go-shintai of Suwa Myoujin.

Related to the go-shintai and how it works, the Shintou processes of kanjou (originally a Buddhist concept) and bunrei or wakemitama –where the spirit or essence of a kami is partitioned and the resulting "divided spirit" (the literal translation of both bunrei and wakemitama) is moved and re-enshrined somewhere else (usually a miniature household altar) so the kami can propagate and be worshipped there too– were referenced by a piece of Touhou lore in Strange and Bright Nature Deity and at the beginning of Silent Sinner in Blue [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/806214114154266625]. @occasionaltouhou was inspired by Strange and Bright Nature Deity and Silent Sinner in Blue, along with Touhou 18 introducing Misumaru Tamatsukuri (a character based on Tama-no-Oya, a heavenly kami with an important role in the myth of Amaterasu hiding in a cave), to propose that each heavenly kami has two separate incarnations in the Touhou universe: one of them moved to the Moon to help build the Lunar Capital, while the other one is still living their own life somewhere in Gensoukyou like Misumaru [https://mashounen2003.tumblr.com/post/806186762832592896].

For Yasakatome, either the Touhou version of her was no longer loyal to the Lunar Capital when she married Takeminakata (and depending on which origin story is applied here, she was either a sort of "estranged third sister" of Toyohime & Yorihime or a rebellious daughter of Yasakahiko), or we can apply the second theory of @occasionaltouhou that I mentioned here: there's a Yasakatome in the Moon (who's either still living with her other two Watatsuki sisters or working with/for her father Yasakahiko), and another Yasakatome in Gensoukyou, born from the idea of her being Suwa Myoujin's wife, who fused with Takeminakata and created Kanako through the process I already described.

As for Takeminakata, we can apply the first theory, but it's going to require a few more steps and a small digression. Based on the concepts of kanjou and bunrei, the lore introduced in Strange and Bright Nature Deity and the theory about Iwanaga-hime's role in Gensoukyou due to Youkai Mountain being her go-shintai, I had come up with another theory that could conciliate this with Ariya Iwanaga's appearance in Touhou 20 [https://mashounen1945.tumblr.com/post/806376826374160384]: even though Ariya was sealed by the Lunarians, the Yatsugatake mountain range was still there and acting as her go-shintai, it eventually became the basis for Youkai Mountain in Gensoukyou, and the pyramid where Ariya was sealed was right below it; it's possible that Yukari and the other Sages used the Yatsugatake mountains as a substitute to summon her spirit and make use of her power of permanence in order to create Youkai Mountain and the rest of Gensoukyou, even though Ariya herself could only feel or maybe witness this ritual without being able to control it or actively take part on it. Takeminakata, with his many natural go-shintai in and around the Suwa Grand Shrine, could have circumvented the seal placed on him by the Lunarians and participated in a ritual where a replica of his spirit (created through kanjou and bunrei, as described earlier) merged with Yasakatome and allowed the resulting "gestalt kami" to exist outside of the seal; the "gestalt kami" in question would be Kanako, and depending of when this merge happened, Kanako could have kept using the identities of Takeminakata and Yasakatome as alter-egos to build the Suwa Myoujin cult and mythology around.

So yeah, this is the new crazy theory I concocted about Kanako's origin. Let me know what you think, and I might be able to come up with something else.

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Addendum:

Resources in English:

Mythological text "Kojiki": translated by Donald L. Philippi (Princeton University Press, 1969); translation by Basil Hall Chamberlain online

Mythological text "Nihongi": translated by William George Aston (London, 1956); 1896 version online

Historical account including mythology "Izumo fudoki": translated by Michiko Yamaguchi Aoki (Tokyo, 1971)

Online Encyclopedia of Shinto (EoS) by Kokugakuin University

Resources in German:

"Kojiki" - deutsche Übersetzung von Klaus J. Antoni (Berlin, 2012)

"Nihongi" - deutsche Übersetzung von Karl Florenz (1901), Link

"Die Mythen des alten Japan" von Nelly Naumann (Köln, 2011)

"Die einheimische Religion Japans - Teil 1: Bis zum Ende der Heian-Zeit" von Nelly Naumann (Leiden/Niederlande, 1988)

"Shintō - Eine Einführung" von Ernst Lokowandt (München, 2001)

Animanga:

"Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha" by Yoshida Morohe

"Inu Yasha" by Takahashi Rumiko

"Jujutsu Kaisen" by Akutami Gege

"Kamisama Kiss"/"Kamisama Hajimemashita" by Suzuki Julietta

"Noragami" by Adachitoka

Movies:

"My Neighbor Totoro" by Miyazaki Hayao

"Princess Mononoke" by Miyazaki Hayao

"Spirited Away" by Miyazaki Hayao

"Noroi" by Shiraishi Kōji (horror movie)

Video Games:

"7'Scarlet" by Otomate/Idea Factory (Otome)

"Project Zero/Fatal Frame" franchise by Koei Tecmo (horror games)

"Ōkami" by Clover Studio/Capcom (Zelda clone)

"Raging Loop" by Kemco (Visual Novel mystery with romance, comedic and disturbing elements)

"Tokyo Dark" by Cherrymochi/Square Enix (Point-and-click-mystery with horror elements)

Fiction Books:

"Dragon Sword and Wind Child" by Noriko Ogiwara

Charakter names:

Hanamaki (花蒔) -> Konohana Sakuyabime (木花之佐久夜毗売)

Kagutsuchi Hino (迦具土 ヒノ) -> Hino Kagutsuchi no Kami (火之迦具土神)

Amari (甘梨) -> Kamo no kimi (甘茂君)

Kushinada (櫛奈雫) -> Kushinadahime (櫛名田比売)

Tatehira (建比良) -> Takehiratori no mikoto (建比良鳥命)

Murakumo (叢雲) -> Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi (天叢雲剣) (other name for imperial regalia Kusanagi)

Hirasaka (比良坂) -> Yomotsu Hirasaka (黄泉比良坂)

Susano (須沙野) -> Takehaya Susanowo no Mikoto (建速須佐之男命)

Kukuri (久々利) -> Kukunochi no Kami (久々能智神)

Tsukuyomi Kagura (月読 カグラ) -> Tsukuyomi no mikoto (月読命); kagura (神楽)

Karasuma Chikage (烏丸 チカゲ) -> Yatagarasu (八咫烏)

Yatsukami Hanate (夜刀神 ハナテ) -> Yatsugatake Mountains (八ヶ岳連峰; myth-related to Konohana Sakuyabime); Konohana Sakuyabime (木花之佐久夜毗売); Futotama no mikoto (布刀玉命)

Other: