Who Is Empress Jingu (Okinaga-tarashi-hime) (Jingu Kogo)?
The empress who crossed the sea at a god's command
Okinaga-Tarashi-Hime-no-Mikoto
Empress Jingu is the chief queen of Emperor Chuai, called Okinaga-tarashi-hime in the Kojiki. She had the power to be possessed by a god and speak its words, and she became the mother of the future Emperor Ojin.
In Tsukushi, a god came down upon her and declared, "I will grant you a land to the west," but Emperor Chuai doubted it and died while playing the koto. The empress asked the god again and was told that the child in her womb would rule the land. She prepared the rites as the god instructed and crossed the sea. Fish great and small carried her ships on their backs, and the waves swept halfway into the land of Silla. Returning to Tsukushi, she gave birth to her son at Umi. On the way back to Yamato, she put down the rebellion of Prince Oshikuma with a ruse: a funeral ship that made it look as though her son had died.
The Kojiki also tells how she bound a stone to her waist to delay the birth, and how she fished for sweetfish at Tamashima to divine the outcome of the campaign. In the Meiji era, her portrait even appeared on Japanese banknotes.
Episodes featuring this character2
NEWEpisode 14
The Music Stopped, and the King Was DeadEmpress Jingū's Expedition to Silla
Kojiki series, Episode 14. A king who doubted the gods' words dies in the middle of playing his koto. "That voice came out of my mouth." Carrying both her guilt and her unborn child, the empress asks the gods again herself. Then she sets out to sea, trusting the fish to carry her fleet across the rough waves. *Based on myths written down some 1,300 years ago, not on historical fact.
19 pages
NEWEpisode 15
WaitEveryone Thinks I'm Dead? — The Revolt of Prince Oshikuma
A mother spreads the rumor that her son is dead, then sails for the capital with the prince and her soldiers hidden aboard a funeral ship. A battle with his scheming half-brothers, a stunning reversal thanks to a bowstring hidden in General Topknot's hair, a lord and his loyal retainer vanishing into a lake, and a strange gift from the god of the northern shore—until the child everyone thought dead returns to his mother, and one day becomes king.
19 pages