Re-reading Mount Kannabe, Ōyamatsumi, and Tajima’s Nature Faith Through the Metaphor of a “Vessel”
(A Personal Mythological Inquiry)
It has been a while since I last wrote about mythology.
My previous article, The Kunato Belief of Kannabe, was an attempt to re-examine boundaries—village entrances, crossroads, mountain passes.
What I found was this: boundaries are not frightening because of the supernatural, but because human anxiety amplifies there.
Kunato deities were not mystical beings meant to scare people—they were part of a social operating system designed to prevent fear from spiraling out of control.
This article continues that line of thought, but shifts the focus slightly.
My question is simple:
Why is this place called “Kannabe”?
And how does the presence of Ōyamatsumi, the mountain deity, overlap with the nature-based faith of Tajima?
Mount Kannabe has a circular crater—about 40 meters deep and roughly 750 meters in circumference—and is described as the youngest volcano in Hyōgo Prefecture.
Its name is commonly said to derive from Kannabi—a place where gods dwell.
That explanation is neat.
Too neat.
Because here’s what keeps bothering me:
If this is just “Kannabi,” then why does the word “nabe”—a pot, a vessel—appear at all?
Why a cooking pot?
Why a tool of daily life?
This article is not an academic paper.
It is a log of my thinking process, written in the way I always write:
Surface layer: commonly accepted explanations
Hidden layer: forces actually shaping those explanations
Root layer: what feels closest to truth, at a bodily level
1. The Surface Explanation: Kannabe Comes from Kannabi
Let’s begin with the most widely accepted view.
Mount Kannabe is said to derive its name from Kannabi—a term used in ancient Japan to describe places where gods reside.
Kannabi generally referred to sacred hills, groves, or mountains believed to house divine spirits.
From this perspective, the explanation is straightforward:
The mountain was regarded as a sacred dwelling of the gods
Kannabi gradually shifted phonetically to Kannabe
The name became fixed as “Kannabe”
This explanation works.
It is clean, respectable, and suitable for guidebooks.
But I can’t stop there.
Because the moment Kannabi becomes Kannabe, something important happens:
a “pot” enters the picture.
If this were merely a phonetic shift, other characters could have been chosen.
Yet the word nabe—a cooking vessel placed at the center of communal life—was selected.
That choice matters.
2. The Hidden Layer: “Nabe” Is About Function, Not Shape
I do not believe the word nabe refers only to shape.
I believe it refers to function.
A pot does five things:
It receives
It is placed over fire
It mixes
It simmers
It is shared
A pot is not just a container.
It is a device that transforms raw nature into communal survival.
Now look again at Mount Kannabe.
It has:
A crater shaped like a vessel
Fire within (it is volcanic)
Water (snow, rain, streams)
Soil
Forests providing fuel
This is not metaphorical stretching.
These are the exact conditions required for a “pot.”
And Tajima’s nature is not gentle.
Winter snow, floods, steep mountains—nature here is not a background.
It is an editor that rewrites life every year.
That is why Tajima’s nature faith was never about healing or comfort.
It was about not being destroyed.
Calling this place “Kannabe” may have meant this:
Not “a mountain where gods live,”
but a place where natural forces are gathered, heated, transformed, and redistributed.
And once you see the mountain that way, one deity naturally emerges.
3. Going Deeper into Myth: Ōyamatsumi Is Not “A Mountain God”
Ōyamatsumi is usually translated as “the god of mountains.”
That translation is inadequate.
Ōyamatsumi represents everything mountains generate—and everything they threaten.
Wood (fuel, construction)
Water (springs, rivers)
Animals (hunting, early livestock)
Soil and minerals
Weather (snow, fog, wind)
Boundaries (passes, ridges, borders)
Mountains are resource systems and danger systems at the same time.
So Ōyamatsumi is not a scenic deity.
He is the administrator of survival and risk.
In Tajima, shrines dedicated to Ōyamatsumi are often found at points where villages meet mountains.
This is not coincidence.
Shrines are not decorations.
They are interfaces.
Faith, in its original form, was not about belief.
It was about making uncontrollable forces manageable.
4. Returning to Kunato: Tajima Is Obsessed with Entrances
At first glance, Kunato (boundary deities) and Ōyamatsumi seem unrelated.
They are not.
Boundaries are where:
Disease enters
Disasters spread
Fear multiplies
Order collapses
Villages fail at their entrances.
Mountains, meanwhile, are where:
Resources descend
Water flows
Life is supplied
Tajima’s belief system, as I see it, combines two mechanisms:
Boundary control (Kunato)
Resource governance (Ōyamatsumi)
Both serve the same purpose:
keeping the community intact.
5. The Root Hypothesis: “Kannabe” Is a Technology of Faith
Now we reach the deepest layer.
I do not think “Kannabe” is just a name.
I think it is a technology.
Place names are not poetry.
They are decisions accumulated over generations.
My hypothesis is this:
Kannabe is the language used to treat nature as something divine, contained, and operational.
A pot is not worshipped.
It is respected because life depends on it.
Calling the mountain a “pot” does three things at once:
It acknowledges danger
It makes transformation possible
It allows sharing
Ōyamatsumi governs what flows into that pot.
Kunato governs what crosses its edges.
This is not mysticism.
It is systems design.
6. My Conclusion: Kannabe Is Not a Curse, Nor a Tourist Brand
I live as a person with a severe acquired disability.
That is why I refuse to romanticize faith.
Faith is not gentle.
Nature is not kind.
Bodies do not return to how they were.
And yet—
“Kannabe” is a beautiful name.
Not because it sounds divine,
but because it represents a decision:
Not to beautify nature
Not to demonize it
But to treat it as a god—because survival requires respect
Kannabe is not a place where gods descended.
It is a place where humans decided they needed gods.
That decision still holds.