Illustrated Legends of the Kitano Tenjin Shrine (Kitano Tenjin engi emaki)

The Shinto belief that aggrieved human spirits can animate forces of nature underlies the origins of Kyoto’s Kitano Tenjin Shrine (Kitano Tenmangū), dedicated to the scholar-poet and statesman Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), who died in exile after having been slandered by enemies at court. Natural disasters and illnesses plagued the capital after his death, but Michizane’s spirit was pacified when he was honored at a shrine dedicated to the thunder god in northwestern Kyoto. Later, he was deified as Tenjin, an ancient god of agriculture, and came to be venerated as the Shinto god of literature and music. Among the more than thirty extant sets of handscrolls recounting Michizane’s life and the events leading to the establishment of the Tenjin cult, this version is second in age and quality only to the early thirteenth-century version in the main Kitano Tenjin Shrine in Kyoto.