Those of you familiar with Mortal Kombat might have heard of today’s kami before, although the game version is quite different from the real one. This is Fujin (風神), the god of the winds. He’s said to be one of the oldest gods, present at the time of Creation when he opened up his bag of winds to clear the morning mists and fill the void between Earth and Heaven.
His appearance is that of a fearsome demon, and in Chinese mythology he and his buddy Raijin (we’ll meet him later) were evil demons who opposed Buddha, but after being defeated by his army, they join his side and have been working as gods since.
While the god of the winds has probably always been a part of Japanese mythology, the imagery we see of Fujin can be traced back to the ancient Greek god of the North Wind, Boreas (from whom we get the words boreal, aurora borealis, and Hyperborea). Boreas carried a magic cloak in which he carried the wind, and he was a very popular god. When Alexander the Great formed his empire, he brought Greek gods and imagery all the way to India’s doorstep, and the cultural reverberations were tremendous. The Greco-Bactrian culture that sprang up in present-day Afghanistan preserved those Greek images long after the dissolution of Alexander’s empire, and eventually merged them with Buddhist iconography, which traveled along the Silk Road to China and then Japan. Pretty cool, huh?
I won’t be posting a kami tomorrow or the next day, as I will be traveling to Yokohama for a friend’s wedding. So have a nice weekend and Coming of Age Day (here in Japan), and when I get back I’ll post a new kami very soon. Maybe I’ll get some nice wedding photos too.
This print is available on my Etsy store. If you’re interested in buying the original, please email me. Thanks for reading!