Ebisu Notebook. Slide 34, Condensed Visual Classroom Guide to Daikokuten Iconography in Japan. Copyright Mark Schumacher, 2017.
In a PMJS posting (10/23/2015), Prof. Raji C. Steineck writes: “Sometime in the medieval period, Ebisu became associated with Izanagi and Izanami's abandoned child
Hiruko. There seems to be a story that Hiruko spent time at the palace of the Dragon king, where he transformed into Ebisu. But the literature I've perused so far doesn't
mention a source for that myth. Should any of you have come across a pertinent primary source, please do let me know.

Ebisu Origins

Ebisu Origins

Ebisu Origins

Bernhard Scheid (Vienna University) writes: One place to begin would be
Ebisu Shinkō Jiten えびす信仰事典, 1999. I used it partly for myintroductory article on Ebisu. There is also an informative online article byDarren Ashmore, which contains a modern version of the Ebisu legend of
Nishinomiya Shrine (stronghold of Ebisu worship) in a long footnote.

David B. Waterhouse (Toronto University.) writes: Ebisu was
originally the tutelary god of the Nishinomiya Jinja in Settsu, andfrom Kamakura times was honoured as a protector of those
who travel in boats. Worship of him spread to major shrines andto Buddhist monasteries as well; and through a series ofidentifications he came to be worshipped also by military men.
One of these identifications involved the Shintō god Ōkuninushino-mikoto… who was taken to be ultimately the same as
Daikokuten (strictly a manifestation of the fierce Tantric deity
Mahākāla). Hence in the Tokugawa period Ebisu and Daikokuten
started to be paired together, and worshipped as bringers ofabundant food and prosperity, particularly at New Year, when
images of them were set on the kami-dama, the ‘god-shelf’.
Ebisu is usually depicted with a fishing rod and fish; andDaikokuten, who was co-opted by the Nichiren school in early
Muromachi times and worshipped as a bringer of good crops, isusually shown with bales of rice and a wooden mallet. The
Daikoku-mai, a New Year dance, developed out of thisassociation.

Iwai Hiroshi (Kokugakuin University) writes: The
common practice of enshrining Daikoku andEbisu together was already observed from that
period (late Muromachi); the practice originatedin the fact that the main object of worship(saijin 祭神) at the Nishinomiya Shrine was
Ebisu Saburō, a figure who, however, wassimultaneously identified with Ōkuninushi nokami and Kotoshironushi no kami. Eventually,
however, Ebisu came to be identified as
Kotoshironushi no kami alone, thus leaving
Daikoku (Ōkuninushi) to be seen as a separate
figure. In homes, the two deities Ebisu andDaikoku came to be enshrined in the area of the
kitchen or oven, while merchants worshiped thetwo as tutelaries of commercial success, andfarmers worshiped them as tutelaries of the rice
paddy (ta no kami).

It seems quite clear that most Ebisu lore including the Hiruko connection
can be traced back to the Nishinomiya Shrine probably in the late Heianperiod. Or rather the Hiroda Shrine (the original "Shrine of the West"),which housed among others a shrine for Ebisu that later became
Nishinomiya in its own right. At that time they started to send out
puppeteers who performed with dolls called Ebisu Hyakudayū. This figure
was seen as a fighter of epidemics (that were otherwise aroused by
Ebisu/Hiruko). In this connection, the pairing with another god of
health/illness, Okuninushi (Daikoku), makes sense, which may explain theearly pairing of Ebisu & Daikoku, long before the seven lucky gods. If one
accepts the original Daikoku connection with Mt. Hiei, Ebisu & Daikoku arealso kami who protect Kyoto from West and (North)East. In any event, thepuppets are probably the original trigger for Ebisu as a god of luck. Gerald
Groemer, specialist on Edo street culture, confirmed to me recently, thatthese Nishinomiya puppeteers (called Ebisu Kaki 恵比寿傀儡) were very
popular and have to be regarded as the predecessors of Bunraku.
The original Hiroda Shrine was, according to Nihon Shoki (chapter on Jingū
Kōgō), dedicated to the rough spirit of Amaterasu. This makes it quiteplausible that Hiru-ko originally had nothing to do with leeches, but was justanother "sun child," probably a "sun boy" opposed to Hiru-me(Amaterasu). On the other hand, the connection Ebisu-Hiruko is explainedby folklorists with the frequent association of Ebisu with deformed, ugly,
unlucky or otherwise negative items or aspects, which can still be found inrural areas. The logic is obviously to call these negative things "Ebisu" (i.e.
stranger) and thereby turn them into something auspicious, something that
also functions as a scapegoat.
I have not dug deep enough to look at engi of Nishinomiya, but I am surethat the Hiruko connection can be found there already very early. My guessis that Nishinomiya/Hiroda managed to connect a new, deformed health /illness deity with imperial mythology by way of pun, turning their sun childinto a leech child that miraculously came back from where the original
myths had sent it.

Kadoya Atsushi (Kokugakuin University) writes: Kotoshironushi
is the offspring of kami Ōkuninushi 大国主命 (aka Daikokuten;
god of agriculture). As part of the pacification of the ’Central
Land of Reed Plains,’ Takemikazuchi, envoy of the heavenly
kami, confronted the earthly kami Ōkuninushi and asked him torelinquish the land. Ōkuninushi entrusted his son with his
response, whereupon Kotoshironushi pledged allegiance to theheavenly kami, and ’hid himself away’ inside an enclosure ofgreen leaves which he had made in the ocean. Based on thisevent, Kotoshironushi is viewed as an oracular deitytransmitting the will of other kami. He also appears as an
oracular deity in Nihongi's account of Empress Jingū andEmperor Tenmu. With the maid Mizokuhihime of Mishima (inSettsu Province), Kotoshironushi had a child namedHimetataraisuzuhime, who later became the wife of Emperor
Jinmu. Kotoshironushi is an object of worship (saijin 祭神) at
shrines such as Miho Jinja in Shimane and Mishima Jinja in
Shizuoka.

Nishioka Kazuhiko (Kokugakuin University)
writes: Hiruko was a deformed infant born toIzanagi and Izanami as a result of Izanami's
mistake in speaking first to Izanagi during theircourtship. The child was placed in a reed boatand set adrift. The meaning of the child's nameis debated, although hiruko means "leach," andthe name may suggest a child with arms andlegs but without bones. The main text of
Nihongi states that the child could not walkeven after reaching three years of age, with theresult that he was placed in the ’rock-camphor
boat of heaven’ and set adrift to the mercy of
the winds. In later times, Hiruko was identified
with Ebisu, a maritime tutelary and one of
the Seven Gods of Good Fortune.

Ebisu Notebook. Slide 34, Condensed Visual Classroom Guide to Daikokuten Iconography in Japan. Copyright Mark Schumacher, 2017.
Iyanaga Nobumi writes (in his upcoming 2018 entry in the Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism): Another important coupling of deities was formed around the same time
(Muromachi era) as the Seven Lucky Gods—that which associates the Buddhist deity Daikoku with the Japanese deity Ebisu. Ebisu is a very complicated kami. Unknown inJapan’s classical mythology, his appearance probably occurred at the end of Heian era. The word ebisu (夷 or 戎) is closely related to the word emishi (蝦夷), which
designates northeastern Japan, or Ezo (蝦夷), originally meant “barbarous” or “wild.” During medieval times, Ebisu’s “original body” (honji) was conceived as Acala (Fudō
Myō-ō) or Vaiśravaṇa—facts that suggest that the deity was represented as a fierce warrior-type character. Ebisu is essentially a marine deity, revered by fishermen. At
the folk-tradition level, a whale or a dolphin running after a shoal of fish, an embryo of a whale, a stone of strange form found at the bottom of the sea, or even a drowned
corpse—that is, anything extraordinary in the sea—could be called “Ebisu” and revered as granting a good catch. In the Muromachi era and later, Ebisu is represented as ashort and fat deity, carrying a fishing rode and holding a big fish (that he has caught) under his arm. At the mythological level, Ebisu (whose main shrine is Nishinomiya [西宮], located halfway between present-day Ōsaka and Kōbe), is closely associated with the deity “Saburō” (三郎; lit. third son), who was revered in a shrine contiguouswith Ebisu’s shrine; and this Saburō was identified with Kotoshiro-nushi-no-mikoto (事代主命) of classical mythology, who is none other than the third son of Ōkuninushino-mikoto. According to the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, Kotoshironushi was fishing at the promontory of Miho (美穂碕) in Izumo when the Heavenly kami descended to earth
and ordered Ōkuninushi to yield his earthly realm; Kotoshironushi obeyed the orders of the Heavenly kami on behalf of his father and went away by boat on the sea tonever return. Moreover, the Nihon shoki says Kotoshironushi was the son of Ōmononushi of Miwa. In medieval times, Saburō’s honji was thought to be Acala orVaiśravaṇa. These affinities intermingled Ebisu and Saburō, so that Ebisu eventually came to be known as Ebisu-Saburō as well. At the same time, in some medieval
sources such as the Jinnō shōtō-ki (神皇正統記; Chronicles of the Authentic Lineages of the Divine Emperors; ca. 1339) by Kitabatake Chikafusa (北畠親房; 1293-1354) or
the Genpei jōsui-ki (源平盛衰記; Tale of the Vicissitudes of Minamoto and Taira Clans; late 14th century), Ebisu-Saburō is identified with Hiruko [蛭子] (or [蛭兒]), thefirst “failed” child born from the union of the Japanese cosmogonical couple, Izanagi 伊弉諾 & Izanami 伊弉冉. He was a “failed” child because three years after his birth,
he still could not walk. Named “Hiruko,” that is “Leech Child,” his parents cast him into the sea in a boat of reeds, so that he never returned. As a lost child-god in the sea,
this deity might be related to Kotoshironushi. How is it possible to explain this widely known & popular linkage of Daikoku & Ebisu? Kita Sadakich’s theory (Kita, 1976)
suggests that Ebisu was mingled with Saburō, and Saburō was another name for Kotoshironushi, who in turn was the son of Ōkuninushi; and since Daikoku & Ōkuninushi
were conflated by at least the 14th century, it is understandable that Daikoku & Ebisu were “paired.” Although this is a plausible theory, we must remember that therelationship between Daikoku & Ōkuninushi was rather recent (end of Muromachi era) and probably after the formation of the Daikoku / Ebisu pairing. Thus, this
explanation seems somehow difficult to accept. Moreover, it is very complicated and far-fetched. Perhaps a simpler, more plausible explanation would be to consider that
Daikoku & Ebisu were both popularized during the Middle Ages—Daikoku as the god of agricultural fertility (recalling his close association with the earth deity) and Ebisu
as the god of bountiful fishing. Both were venerated in Japan’s thriving urban markets & became two of Japan’s most popular deities of “good trading,” with Daikoku
representing the land & agriculture and Ebisu representing the ocean & fishing. If the association of Ebisu with Hiruko, the “Leech Child,” has a deep mythical basis, itwould be interesting to enlarge our perspective to a larger East Asian mythology rather than to restrict ourselves to the strict field of the history of Japanese beliefs. For
example, the Caturśīti-siddha-pravṛtti (Manifestation of the Eighty-Four Siddhas) by Abhayadatta (late 11th or early 12th C.) contains a chapter dedicated to a Siddha
named ”Mīnapa” (aka “Mīnapāda,” meaning “fish’s foot,” identified with Matsyendranātha) who was a fisherman living in eastern India; one day, he was swallowed by ahuge fish. While in the fish’s stomach, he eavesdropped a secret teaching given by Mahādeva (Śiva) to Umā (his consort). Mīnapa was subsequently initiated by Mahādeva
and spent the next twelve years meditating inside the fish’s belly. When the fish was eventually caught by another fisherman, its belly was cut open & Mīnapa appeared.
People were amazed at the sight of this man. Not only had he lived twelve years in a fish’s stomach, but he was also a saint. “Given offerings by everyone, Mīnapa danced
all over the land, his feet never imprinting the ground” (Abhayadatta, Buddha’s Lion. The Lives of The Eighty-four Siddhas, ET by James B. Robinson, 2014, 47-49; see R. A.
Stein, 1986, 43 and n. 65; Iyanaga, 2002B, 478-484, 754-755). Such a mythical figure, deeply associated with both the sea and fishing, and also with Śaiva mythology, may
be referred to if we consider Japan’s linkage of Daikoku with the “Leech Child” Ebisu.

Ebisu Notebook. Slide 34, Condensed Visual Classroom Guide to Daikokuten Iconography in Japan. Copyright Mark Schumacher, 2017.
Hiruko-no-kami, Dokun and the Fisherman: a modern version of the myth, told at the Nishinomiya Shrine.
Written by Darren-Jon Ashmore, Assistant Professor, Akita International University, 2007
See: http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2007/Ashmore.html
This tale begins long ago, when the kami took more of a hand in things than they do now. After a long and fruitless day on the western sea, a young
fisherman caught a strange stone effigy in his nets. In disappointment he threw it back, but before long he dragged up the same effigy and, deciding that
this meant something important, he took it home and placed it in the most auspicious part of his house. In the night a crippled spirit came to him and said 'I
am Hiruko-no-kami [Leech Child of Izanagi and Izanami]. I have travelled far and, liking this land, now wish to be worshipped here. Build me a hall a little tothe West of your home and enshrine this effigy there'. The fisherman recognized the divine nature of Hiruko-no-kami and began the work with his friends
the next day, erecting the Hiroda Daimyojin [The Great Shrine in the Plain], near the beach where the fisherman had brought the effigy ashore, to honour
their new patron. However, in such a place, there were no miko who could be persuaded to dance for the crippled kami, fearing this alien god. So as eachday passed without a miko at the Hiroda Daimyojin the western sea rose, storms from far away rolled over the land flattening the crops in the fields andmany children were struck down with illnesses. However, after one hundred days of tempest, a mysterious old man of no known family, who called himself
Dokun, appeared at Hiroda and claimed to be able to calm the spirit. The priests allowed him to make a puppet and dance with it before the sea shrine to
Hiruko-no-kami. When Dokun and his puppet danced, the western sea was charmed, the crops sprang up in the whistling winds and the ailments of thechildren left them. All the people made offerings at the Hiroda Daimyojin. Though not a miko, Dokun served at Hiroda for many years, never once failing in
his task and never once suffering the [polluted] touch of his master. However, eventually he became too frail and passed away, and on his death Hiruko-nokami once again became enraged and threatened the land. The emperor, hearing of this and remembering the amagutsu doll which his elder sister had
made to save him from the plague when a child, ordered that a puppet be clad in Dokun's clothing and manipulated just as Dokun himself had danced forthe gods. This was done and the kami was once again appeased. […] Thus, shortly afterwards, many copies of the divine Dokun puppet were fashioned by
the priests of the Hiroda Daimyojin to sell or carry from shrine to shrine and house to house, where miko were not to be found, in order to entertain thekami and abjure from Hiruko-no-kami protection from disease for the faithful. Even today people bring their babies to the shrine on their one hundredth
day of life to receive the blessing of Hiruko-no-kami in his guise as Ebisu-Hyakudayū, the patron of puppeteers and guardian of children. Interview with
Yoshii Sadatoshi, the Chief Priest at Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine, 2001.
Raji C. Steineck (Universität Zürich) writes: I came across a story in the Shintō yūrai no koto chapter of the 14th-C. Shintōshū 神道集. Interestingly enough,here, it is said that Izanagi and Izanami have three male children (the Sun god, Amaterasu, the moon god, and Susanoo) and one female child (Hiruko).
Hiruko arrives in her boat at the palace of the Dragon king, who raises the child for some years and then sends it back; but because the Dragon king has no
domain on land, he assigns the high waters of Sumiyoshi as the domain of Hiruko. The Shintōshū concludes the passage with a note that this is the deity
venerated in Nishinomiya, and celebrated in an autumn festival of fishermen under the name of Ebisu. See Sakamoto Tarō. Shintōshū. Vol. 1. Shintō Taikei.
Bungakuhen. Tōkyō: Shintō Taikei Hensankai, 1988, pp. 2-3.

Ebisu Notebook. Slide 34, Condensed Visual Classroom Guide to Daikokuten Iconography in Japan. Copyright Mark Schumacher, 2017.
Month without the Gods: Shinto and Authority in Early Modern Japan, pp. 36-38
Written by Yijiang Zhong, Associate Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies on Asian, Tokyo

In its promotion of Ōkuninushi, the Izumo Shrine did not stop at deliberately conflating the representations of the god with those of Daikoku the fortune
god. Another strategy was to couple Ōkuninushi with his son Kotoshironushi and conflate the father-son gods with the images of Mahākāla and Ebisu, thelatter of which being another popular god of fortune, particularly as the god of fishing and bountiful catch for fishermen. By so doing, Izumo preachers
borrowed the popularity of Mahākāla and Ebisu as the two fortune gods that came to be enshrined and worshipped together from the sixteenth century.
The origin of the god Ebisu was difficult to trace although his connection with sea became from early on the major dimension of the god’s identity. As akyōgen play called Ebisu Daikoku from the sixteenth century shows (more below), the god had been identified with Hiruko, the leech child of the couple
gods Izanami and Izanagi in their joint project of engendering the Japanese islands, according to the Divine Age narratives of The Chronicle of Japan (Nihon
shoki) and Record of Ancient Matters (Kojiki). The leech child greatly disappointed the two gods and was abandoned by being flown away into the sea. But
deciding the ancestry of Ebisu by his connection with the creation myth could be a later attempt to explain Ebisu’s already popular connection with sea
rather than being the reason leading to his popularity as the god of fishing. Ambiguous origin notwithstanding, popular representations of Ebisu in the earlymodern period were the god holding a fishing pole or a sea bream. Ebisu from early on had also been associated with commerce. Shrines to Ebisu as atutelary of the marketplace were dedicated (kanjō) within the temple Tōdaiji in Nara in 1163 and at Kamakura’s Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in 1253, and they
gradually drew the devotion of merchants, in conjunction with the expansion of commerce. The shrine of Ebisu, the Nishinomiya Shrine not far from thecommercial center Osaka, was the major promoter of the god as the tutelary of commerce. One strategy of promotion by Nishinomiya Shrine wasjuxtaposing Ebisu with Daikoku (Figures 6 & 7), partly because Daikoku, that is, Okuninushi, was also enshrined at the shrine compound with the main
sanctuary devoted to Ebisu, and partly because it had been a customary practice to place the two gods together for worshiping. The afore-mentioned
Kyōgen play, Ebisu and Daikoku, shows that the coupling was already in place by the sixteenth century. The story is simple: a devout follower of the twogods was visited by the two and was offered plenty of goods and money as result of his devotion. In the play, the two gods explained their own origin. The
Ebisu god traced his ancestry to the couple gods Izanami and Izanagi whereas Daikoku to the Tendai Temple on Mount Hiei as the protective god of its
numerous believers.
The god Kotoshironushi similarly could be associated with sea. In the narratives of The Chronicle of Japan and Record of Ancient Matters, Kotoshironushi wasenjoying fishing when the heavenly gods sent down by the Sun Goddess to subjugate Okuninushi found him and demanded his submission. After the god
agreed to submit to the Sun Goddess, he retreated into the far sea. The Izumo priests and preachers magnified this association with sea and conflated therepresentations of Kotoshironushi with those of Ebisu. The deliberate conflating and coupling of the father-son gods as fortune gods by the Izumo Shrine
generated mutually reinforcing effects with Nishinomiya Shrine; the promotion of Daikoku and Ebisu was simultaneously that of Okuninushi and
Tokoshironushi. These proselytizing strategies were deployed by the Izumo Shrine to popularize its gods with the eventual goal of raising more funds. These
strategies, however, also functioned as articulations of a form of authority of Ōkuninushi not simply as the lord of the Shinto pantheon but also as thesource of human life itself. A different vision of Shinto divinity from the imperial one was articulated: Ōkuninushi as the god of agriculture, symbolized by
the bales of rice, and Kotoshironushi as the god of sea, symbolized by the fish held in his hand, represented provision of the necessary conditions for human
life, or the source of life, the emphasis of which worked to relativize the rice-centered vision of life transmitted by and conditioned upon the rule of the Sun
Goddess and her imperial descendants.