"You're looking for myths and folklore of the Suwa region?"

"Yes, especially anything concerning Takeminakata's invasion of Suwa and defeat of the native gods. Or anything about Yasakatome, Takeminakata's wife."

It was the day after our talk with Tewi. After classes, we had returned to Hieda manor and this time found Akyuu at home. We sat with her, the reincarnation of the Kojiki's author enjoying freshly brewed tea and quiet music wafting from a spring-loaded phonograph.

"Well, I'm sure I have something that would be of use to you, but why the interest in Suwa? You know you can't get there from here, right?"

"My apologies, but I'm afraid I can't reveal my reasons right now."

"That's a pretty suspicious reply..."

"I am sorry, but my role as a great detective requires me not to divulge my theories until the right moment. I promise that once the time has come, I'll explain it all to you in detail." Renko said, raising a hand pleadingly.

Akyuu sighed but began to read from the records in her head, offering a halting summary and pausing occasionally to translate or condense the texts in her mind. "First off, this Yasakatome doesn't appear anywhere in the Kojiki or the Nihonshoki, so I've got no record of her. My guess would be that she might have been one of the native gods of Suwa that Takeminakata conquered and deposed as he claimed the Suwa region.

"Alright then, what can you tell me about Takeminakata and his invasion of Suwa?"

"The story of their battle is recorded in the Suwa Daimyōjin Ekotoba, which is a series of medieval picture scrolls... according to the story they tell, Takeminakata was an invader from another land who came and battled the native gods of the Suwa region. It is said that when they clashed, the champion of the native gods bore a pair of iron rings into battle, but Takeminakata was able to dispatch them using nothing more than the branch of a wisteria tree. After the battle, Takeminakata hurled the branch into the ground and where it struck a wisteria grove immediately sprouted."

"And that native Suwa god, that was the goddess Moriya?"

"Ah, that's a little complicated. The legends just describe Takeminakata as fighting a native god, but they don't specify which one. At that time there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of native gods for every aspect of the Suwa region, collectively called the Mishaguji. Later on, all of the myriad native gods of the region came to be worshipped as one entity, which either comprised all of them put together or was seen as the ruler of them all. That's the goddess Moriya, so I see how you might get them conflated."

Renko leaned in close to whisper to me. "So all of this time we thought that Takeminakata had defeated Suwako but they may not have ever even met, potentially."

"If that's the case, calling it the 'Moriya shrine' makes even less sense."

Sitting back upright, Renko spoke to Akyuu again. "So if multiple Mishaguji were combined into or underneath Moriya and worshipped as one, where did the name Moriya come from in the first place?"

"Hmm, there's no written records about that, but there is a mount Moriya in the Suwa region that's had that same name since antiquity. My guess would be that 'Moriya' was originally the name of a native god associated with that mountain."

"So then Moriya wouldn't be a divine spirit but a native god, right?"

"Presumably, yes."

"I heard recently that divine spirits have the ability to be in any number of places at once but native gods can't do that, right?"

"You'd probably be better off asking a question like that of Reimu, but yes, that's my understanding as well."

"I think I'm starting to understand why that would be. Let's say that I were to worship the original writer of the Kojiki, Heida no Are."

"Hah, thank you very much. There's no need to worship me though."

"Well, that's just the thing. Hieda no Are isn't you. Are is long dead and no longer exists as a physical entity. You may have some of his memories, his skills and his knowledge, but you aren't the same person. You couldn't predict what sort of foods he would have liked or what his favorite color was. What you have of him is just those things that can be duplicated endlessly without any loss - ideas and knowledge. The Heida no Are that exists in my mind as an object of worship might even be completely different from the real person. If I started a cult and we all got to worshipping him, then there could be as many different versions of Are being worshipped as there were worshippers. That's what it means for a divine spirit to be replicable - they're a concept of a person who doesn't exist any more or maybe never existed, so since they're just an idea, they can be anywhere and everywhere, and can exist in multiple places without being diminished."

"For natural objects though, it's a different story. If instead of you I was to start worshipping Youkai Mountain, then that's something that has a more visible impact on my day to day life. Mountains have been worshipped for a long time, which makes sense as they can be a source of both blessings like water, food and lumber and disasters like landslides and flash floods. Because a mountain is only in one place, belief in it become indigenous to that region. If I again started a cult worshipping the mountain, then we'd all have to agree on which mountain was being worshipped and what it was like. Similarly if a member of that cult moved somewhere where they could no longer see the mountain, we wouldn't expect them to keep worshipping it."

"Ah, I see what you're getting at," Akyuu replied. "You're suggesting that the difference between divine spirits and native gods is the presence or absence of the object of worship. Worshippers of a divine spirit are essentially worshipping the idea of a god rather than that god itself, even if the god was once a person who actually existed."

"Exactly. Take, for example, Sugawara Michizane. He was a real person while he was alive, but after his death he came to be revered as Tenjin, the god of learning. They even have shrines for him and students pray to him during exams every year in the Outside world. What they're invoking when they do that though is not Sugawara Michizane, the man who would later be venerated as a god, but his spirit, which is enshrined as Tenjin."

"So humans who are worshipped as gods would be unable to replicate themselves until they died and became spirits. Your theoretical little cult couldn't spread as a religion because I'm still here and can't hear the prayers of someone outside of Gensokyo. That makes sense."

"If you were to die though..."

"Then supposing you enshrined my spirit, I suppose I might become a divine spirit who could be worshipped anywhere. I don't think that's a good idea in my case though, the Yama is already expecting my spirit."

"Hah. I wonder if it's the same for nature spirits. If people were to worship a sacred tree, for example, but that that tree got cut down would there be a divine spirit that could be enshrined?"

"A tree that gets cut down is just lumber, and I can't see anyone worshipping that. I would think that if the natural element tied to a native god vanished then that god would vanish too."

"Alright then, what about the fertility gods that come to the harvest festival every year? They take human forms, right? Aren't they being worshipped as individuals then?"

"I sincerely doubt it. Do you remember Minoriko Aki? She's a harvest god who I introduced you to last year."

Renko rubbed at the back of her head. "Oh, uhh not really. You pointed out a lot of gods there. There was the god of rice paddies, the god of autumn leaves, the god of fields. Was she the one with fruit on her hat?"

"Oh, very good! For most people the only thing they can remember about her is that she smells like..."

"Ah! Sweet potatoes! Roasting on a fire! I remember!" I blurted out. "I remember that I couldn't concentrate on you telling us her name because she smelled so delicious and they hadn't brought out the food yet."

Akyuu chuckled at my outburst. "Yes, that's her alright. She's not a particularly popular goddess and people don't tend to mention her much, but when they do, it's because they're thinking of food. As a goddess of autumn harvests that's her domain. If there were no harvest or no sweet potatoes one year, I doubt anyone would remember her at all. To them she's a manifestation of good harvests and autumn foods, even if sometimes she drinks and dances with the villagers and wears fruit on her hat, she's still not really a person, just the harvest, personified."

"Alright then," Renko continued. "Native gods don't become divine spirits, it sounds like. What are divine spirits actually like though? They also have a physical presence in Gensokyo, right? Is there any way to tell them apart from a native god?"

"Strong ones do. A divine spirit is basically just a ghost that receives worship. They are tied to this world by their feelings of compassion or obligation to their followers, and draw power from their followers faith. Many divine spirits may be too weak to manifest a visible presence. They rely on shrine maidens like Reimu to hear them and occasionally even embody them."

"So then if they are strong enough to have a physical presence, can they split that presence into multiple locations just like they split their spirit?"

"From what Reimu has told me, no. Being in multiple places allows them to perceive and receive faith from multiple places at once, but if they wanted to manifest in multiple locations, each copy of their spirit would have to do that individually. That's why miracles of gods appearing in multiple places at the same time are very rare. It's apparently very costly for them to do."

I tried to tumble the implications of all of this around in my head. If a branch shrine to Kanako were to be erected on the Hakurei shrine's grounds, Kanako would be able to hear everything going on there, and even materialize there if she wanted to. While doing so she would still be able to hear everything going on back at the Moriya shrine and if she was powerful enough, she might even be able to be in both locations at once. So far I hadn't seen any detail that contradicted anything Kanako had told us herself.

As I was puzzling it out, my partner raised a finger, asking "Well then what about ghosts? Like the lady of Hakugyokuro or the Prismriver Ensemble. I know those two are different sorts of entities, but what if people started worshipping either of them?"

"...Well, I don't know, of course, but my guess is that they would become powerful divine spirits."

"I see. So a native god can't become a divine spirit, but a ghost could. What about the other way around? Could a divine spirit become a native god if they became associated with a particular place or thing?"

"What an interesting question," Akyuu said, pondering it. "I don't think I've ever heard of anything like that happening, but there are some divine spirits that are quite similar to native gods in some ways. Watatsumi, god of the sea for example. He's one of the sons of Izanagi and Izanami, but he rules over the oceans. Everything about the seas is supposedly under his domain, but he's not thought of as being the ocean itself."

"I see, I see. Thank you Akyuu, you've helped me learn a lot about gods today. Let's get back to my original question. Takeminakata is a divine spirit, capable of replicating himself and being in many places at once, while the native god of Suwa that he conquered is one of the Mishaguji and not capable of the same, is that right? For native gods like that, the form they choose to appear in is meaningless, right? They can appear as anything."

"They can take any form that falls within their domain, but I wouldn't call their choice of form meaningless. As gods of the land, they would want to take the shape of something that was associated with their lands and capable of inspiring belief from humans, I would think. If a native god were born from the worship of snakes or a land full of snakes, for example, then they would probably appear as a snake or a snake-like human."

"So in the case of Moriya then...?"

"Well Moriya is a conglomeration of various different Mishaguji, the original native gods of the Suwa region. So in her case almost any form would be within her domain. The Mishaguji cover everything in Suwa, after all. From the plants to the water, to the animals to the land itself. Why all this concern over Moriya's appearance though? Does it matter what a god looks like?"

"Hmmm, well you'll probably find out about it sooner or later, I suppose..." Renko began.

"Oh, does this have to do with the new god that appeared on Youkai Mountain? Keine was talking about that at the meeting. I should have guessed she heard about it from you two."

"Impressive, Akyuu. I should have guessed the information network of the Child of Miare would be quick to pick up on the latest rumors."

"I assume then that this new god has some connection to Suwa and the Mishaguji? Can you give me any details?"

"Ah, not yet I'm afraid. I can't be sure of any connections or lack thereof yet. That's why I'm asking all of these questions."

"It almost sounds like you've been in contact with these gods already. But that would mean you'd have had to have somehow ascended Youkai Mountain."

"I can neither confirm nor deny such an allegation. No comment."

Akyuu fixed Renko with an even stare for a moment then sighed. "Fine, I'll just ask Reimu about it then. From the sound of it I might have some writing to do."

"Thank you for your understanding," Renko said with a grin and a nod.