#kinmamon

[seanthedracunyan]

Kinmamon: I Kinmamon. That is from far away I come. You are, from far away? Then, both of us? That's that.

Lois lane: what even is this thing !?

[newtonian-tragedy]

I made a Kinmamon ornament for my Christmas tree!

[newtonian-tragedy]

I finally find my queen and they misgender her—a deity who used to be in the literal Megami (lit. "goddess") race in the older games!

As someone who has spent countless unpaid hours correcting poor localizations (Fromsoft, I'm looking at you) I realize it's just a careless oversight.

But it hits you harder if you know anything about Ryukyuan history and the declining roles of women in power in their religion (of which Kinmamon is the chief goddess, who can only be channeled through miko, who are female!)

Maybe it's hard to tell that she's a girl because her head is just a giant ball (a reflection of her real-life counterpart lacking a canonical appearance), her manner of speech and voice are unambiguously feminine. It's high and bubbly, like the laughter of children.

Just makes me low-key angy, but overall I'm super happy that she's even in the game to begin with and that I finally have her in my party.

Kinmamon will always be a Megami to me, but I think the developers classing her as one of the Enigma race (who can only be obtained by chance through fusion accidents) was actually a clever decision, as it suits her nature as a Marebito ("wandering god").

Giving her strong baseline potential in Almighty and Healing abilities (while Physical damage is in the negative range) also makes sense, because she works through shamans, whose purpose is to heal and perform miracles.

In addition to supporting you on the battlefield, she is also very motherly and will always be there for you emotionally.

❤️❤️❤️❤️

[newtonian-tragedy]

Some people were surprised by Kinmamon's race being switched to Megami in Soul Hackers 2 (when it has always been Enigma).

However, I'm not sure if anyone has noticed this, but a Soul Hackers 1 card refers to Kinmamon unambiguously as a megami (not the race, but in the literal sense), which means that her gender has more or less been confirmed since at least 2001.

It wasn't easy to transliterate from such a low-res source, so any errors are completely my own:

琉球神道の最高神とされる。 漢字では「君真物」 と書き、語源は正式な巫女という意味らしい。 と、いうのも沖縄の先島列島には現在も「ユタ」 という口寄せや預言をする多数の巫女が民間 信仰として根付いていて、その中でも代表の巫女同化してが交信する神がキンマモンだったのだろう。 基本的には海の女神である。

[She] is considered the supreme deity of Ryuku Shinto (Okinawan religion). Written in kanji as 「君真物」, the etymology appears to refer to a formal shrine maiden. This is because even today in the Sakishima Islands of Okinawa, there are many shrine maidens called "yuta" (shamans) who can channel spirits and make prophecies, and among them, Kinmamon was probably the deity with whom the highest-ranking shrine maiden assimilated and communicated. [She] is basically a goddess of the sea.

*Note: This is one possible reading. Kimishinmono ("The True One") as a shrine maiden title is mentioned in the official translations cited on the wiki, and is also explained a bit more here.

but the other is Kimimamono which apparently comes directly from the Ryukyu creation myths.

These are also mentioned in the official translations of the lore, albeit with different names (which are more accurate than the transliterations in the above source).

But this explains the reference to the "yin and yang" or "dual nature" of Kinmamon, which I assume is simply a truncated form of the second reading.

There is a much more in-depth post about Kinmamon by dailydemonspotlight, but this is just my (very trivial) contribution to the lore. As an enthusiast of both SMT and shamanism, I really enjoyed reading about Rokuro Takayasu's founding of Ijun in the 1970s as a revival of a deity which hadn't been worshiped since the early 17th century. This decision was based on a spiritual encounter with Kinmamon personally.

There is even a book by Takayasu that I wanted to consult for further context, but sadly its accessibility seems limited to only a select number of libraries.

Even more rare to obtain is any edition of the Ryûkyû Shintô ki, which was the 1605 book that the spirit of Kinmamon allegedly informed Takayasu to read, which is most likely where the very first reference to the former originated.

According to one source that I read, as of 2012, Ijun as an organization is no longer active, and Takayasu himself passed away in 2018, but Kinmamon worship is still alive and well (at least in Okinawa).

Yet as per the same source, Kinmamon worship was intended to be more of an ecumenical experience or "new world religion":

Takayasu understood Kinmamon to be a mysterious universal life force that people must awaken to; this life force is accessible to everyone, regardless of his or her faith tradition.

As much as I try to avoid going off into tangents about other fandoms, the subject matter isn't terribly unfitting for my blog, considering how it somewhat eerily mirrors the revival of Robert Hooke's life and work in the early 2000s following a nearly three-century-long period of obscurity.

And even though my screenname is Mico for reasons unrelated to shrine maidens, until recently it was kind of lost on me that the kanji miko 巫 on its own is a literal translation for 'shaman'.

If those two things aren't serendipity, I don't know what is. Even though I've been taking a break from research by playing SMTVV this summer, all roads eventually seem to lead me back to my own spiritual path and "patron deity".

[eirikrjs]

Kinmamon is apparently a Megami?

Yep!

I guess think back to that Amaterasu quest in SJ.

[eirikrjs]

You wouldn't happen to know anything about Aramisaki, do you? I've always wanted to know why is she made of lava... And while I'm on the subject...Would you happen to know anything about Kinmamon at all? XD

Not very much. Both are so obscure probably your only shot is in Japanese-language materials.

However, a long time ago I got a friend to translate a little bit of info about Kinmamon from a Japanese book, and it’s been on Giant Bomb. Here it is:

Also known as “the God from Beyond the Sea, Marebito”, Kinmamon is an enigmatic and mysterious deity of Ryukyu Shinto, a branch of Shinto obviously practiced in the Ryukyu islands. His/her connections with sea travel and the implication that he/she brought “life” to the Ryukyu islands are thought to imply it was an introduced figure and was quite possibly Amaterasu who was introduced and then changed through lack of continual contact at the time. The kanji used for Kinmamon’s name, “  君真物 ” literally meaning “the true one”, are also thought to have been used as an honorific title for miko (shrine maidens); consequently, there is also a belief that perhaps Kinmamon is simply the evolution of the deification of miko. In addition, the kanji “ 君” is often used to write “ 神女”, megami or “goddess”, in the local Ryukyu dialect which causes even further gender confusion!Bibliography:   『琉球神道記』  袋中著    宜野座嗣剛  訳  東洋図書出版   “Records of Ryukyu Shinto” by  Hiroshi Azuma.  Orient Books Publications/Shorin Ronshu, 2001.  ISBN-10: 4947667737

I’m pretty sure we looked into this around the time of Strange Journey’s release to try and find an explanation for the Amaterasu quest where she takes the guise of Kinmamon. This seems to explain that! 

For Aramisaki, her name in kanji is 荒御前. Among her enshrinements is one at Shirayama-Hime Shrine in Ishikawa, where Shirayama-hime is another name for Kikuri-hime. But we shouldn’t ignore the important clues already in Aramisaki’s demon profile, which I think spells out basically everything that needs it:

“A violent goddess known as the Ara Mitama of the Sumiyoshi gods.When Empress Jingu went to Shinra, Aramisaki was sent by Amaterasu to protect the ship she was on. She is also a jealous god, and is known as a goddess of separation as Aramisakihime." 

First, the Sumiyoshi are sea and sailing gods. Next, the Empress Jingu goes to “Shinra”–aka “新羅“ or Silla, the ancient Korean kingdom. The legend of Empress Jingu’s invasion of Silla is recounted in both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, where she is said to have overwhelmed Silla’s armies by “supernatural control of the tide.” Since I have the Kojiki handy, here’s a passage of interest after her conquest:

Then [Empress Jingu] stood her staff at the gate of the king of Silla and worshipped the “rough spirit” (ara-mitama) of the great deities of Sumiyoshi, whom she made tutelary deities of the land. Then she crossed back over [the sea]. Kojiki, 94:7

While it doesn’t mention Aramisaki’s name, if you go by the SMT profile, the “ara-mitama” is a more or less direct reference to the god. So if Aramisaki is the ara-mitama of the Sumiyoshi gods, that’s at least a partial explanation for her design, as, according to Philippi’s footnotes in the Kojiki here, the ara-mitama we are more familiar with is the “active, dynamic aspect of a deity”–or violent. Imagine Empress Jingu having summoned Kaneko’s fiery Aramisaki on her voyage. 

But what’s strange about Aramisaki, and what this doesn’t explain, is how she seems to have become a separate deity. Same for her purported “jealousy.” I can’t think of another instance of a mitama spirit being considered separate from its divine possessor. The gods’ mitama can certainly be enshrined separately, as I was excited to find in Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto a shrine for Susanoo’s ara-mitama. If I had to make an educated guess though, I’d wager that the separate Aramisaki tradition is newer than the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki sources, with perhaps more relevant information hiding behind that Shirayama-Hime Shrine link.

[majorhemorrhage]

Enigma Kinmamon

[dojizerker]

@kinmamon: Basically. The game tallies up your alignment points along a sliding scale. You get points for Law or Chaos, but never Neutral. Your dialogue choice factors into this more than demon usage. If you want to go Neutral, it's safer to do the alignment trick in the fairy town until MC's name is white. Most you miss out on are demons of opposing alignments not participating in Demon Co-Op