Nakayama Miki’s 1838 revelation of Tenrikyo

Record summary

Tenrikyo tradition dates its founding revelation to 1838, when Nakayama Miki’s household became the setting for a dramatic religious calling in which she was identified as the Shrine of God. She subsequently taught healing, ecstatic prayer, sacred dance and a vision of a joyous human life. The episode offers a useful comparison with female charismatic authority, possession language and new religious formation in nineteenth-century Japan. Its details are preserved in Tenrikyo scriptures and institutional histories, whose retrospective theological framing should be distinguished from independent contemporary documentation.