Fujin- Japanese GodDeity"Guardian of the Northwest"

The Wind Kami

The Kojiki records the birth of Shinatsuhiko, the wind kami, from the breath of Izanagi and Izanami during the age of divine creation. When Buddhism arrived in Japan in the sixth and seventh centuries, it brought its own wind deity, a fierce guardian figure clutching a great bag from which storms issued. The two merged in Japanese religious practice: Fujin became both a kami of the ancient Shinto wind and a Buddhist guardian whose ferocity defends sacred ground from malevolent forces.

The Divine Wind

In 1274, Kublai Khan dispatched a fleet of some nine hundred ships carrying forty thousand soldiers to invade Japan. After fierce fighting at Hakata Bay in northern Kyushu, where Japanese warriors confronted an unfamiliar enemy fighting in massed formations, a powerful storm struck the Mongol fleet. The typhoon scattered and sank many vessels, forcing a retreat.

Seven years later, the Khan sent an even larger armada, estimates suggest up to four thousand ships and over a hundred thousand troops. Again the Japanese defenders fought at Hakata Bay, this time behind stone defensive walls they had constructed in the intervening years. Again a massive typhoon struck the invasion fleet, this time with catastrophic losses that ended the Mongol threat permanently.

These storms were called kamikaze, divine wind, and were understood as heaven's direct answer to the prayers offered at shrines across the country. At Ise Grand Shrine, the Kaze-no-Miya, the Wind Shrine, gained special prominence after these events, with prayers offered there credited with summoning the saving typhoons.

Guardians at the Gate

Fujin and Raijin stand together at temple gates across Japan, fierce sentinels whose terrifying power guards the threshold. At Sanjusangendo in Kyoto, wooden statues carved by masters of the Kei school during the thirteenth century capture Fujin mid-stride, his wind bag billowing above him, his body coiled with barely contained explosive energy. At the Kaminarimon, the Thunder Gate of Senso-ji in Asakusa, their painted forms blaze against the massive red lantern that hangs between them. Pilgrims pass between wind and thunder to enter the temple precinct, walking through the space where the two elemental forces meet.