The provenance file on Kagutsuchi
Provenance record 252 · Kagutsuchi · one temple, fully accounted for.
Provenance
1. The attestation. 迦具土 — "The burning force". On record: Kojiki I.8–11 (tr. Philippi; tr. Chamberlain), Nihon Shoki I (tr. Aston), Philippi, Norito, Aston, Nihongi.
2. The narrative record. The Burning Birth — After the islands were born, Izanami bore the last child of the creation — the fire kami Kagutsuchi — and his birth burned her. The Kojiki (I. The Blade of Grief — Izanagi's grief turned to rage — 'Why must I lose my beloved for this one child? ' — and drawing the Totsuka-no-Tsurugi, the ten-handled sword of the brine, he cut the fire kami down.
3. The physical record. Kagutsuchi left no temples, inscriptions, or cult images — the evidence for him is textual and geological. The textual witness is the eighth-century manuscript tradition of the Kojiki (712 CE) and the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), whose compilers fixed the story; the Shinpukuji-bon and the Urabe recension are its principal witnesses. The 'archaeology' of his body is the archipelago itself: the volcanic chain from Fuji to Aso to Sakurajima, with its crater shrines and steam vents, and the hot-spring country the Kojiki already reads as the fire kami's remains. And beneath the myth lie the oldest controlled fires on earth: the hearths of Jōmon pit-dwellings (from c. 14,000 BCE), where a culture learned to keep the exact double attitude the myth prescribes — fire fed daily, and feared daily. That hearths older than any shrine in Japan still govern his cult is the most honest monument he has.
4. The current holding. The temple at /kagutsuchi/, classified Tier 2. The restoration keeps one feature the ASCII form drops. One is enough to matter, and the label says so plainly: Tier-2.
5. The documented resonances. Disaster Resilience & Recovery, Thermal, Geothermal & Fire Energy, Environmental & Climate Services — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
6. The primary sources. Kojiki, Nihon Shoki — the library this file answers to, open at the Sacred Texts collection.
7. The continuing record. Kagutsuchi survives wherever Japan's volcanoes are in the news — the country that monitors its peaks for eruption is, in the old language, watching over the scattered body of a god. His name circulates widely in modern fantasy and games as a volcanic or destructive kami, sometimes flattened into a monster, though the original story is more tragic than fearsome: a child destroyed for being born what he was.
At a Glance
- Restored name: Kagutsuchi
- ASCII form: kagutsuchi
- Meaning: "The burning force"
- Domain of influence: Fire, Volcanoes
- Pantheon: Japanese
- Classification: Tier 2
- Original script: 迦具土
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 252 of 548
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Kꜣ (read it here) · next file: Kai (read it here).
The Restoration Files are written from the same canonical record as the temples themselves: the lexicon, the lore catalog, the pattern atlas, and the cited scholarly sources. If a file ever disagrees with its temple, the temple is right — tell us, and the file will be corrected.