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An Eighth Century Chronicle Records En no Gyoja's Banishment for Sorcery, Not a Miracle

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An Eighth Century Chronicle Records En no Gyoja's Banishment for Sorcery, Not a Miracle

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

En no Gyoja, also called En no Ozunu, was banished by the imperial court to the island of Izu Oshima in 699 after being accused of sorcery, a documented judicial exile distinct from a punishment recorded only in later legend with no basis in an official chronicle. The eighth century chronicle Shoku Nihongi attributes the accusation to envy of his powers, a documented near contemporary explanation distinct from a charge the record leaves entirely unexplained.

Tradition holds that he was born in 634 at Katsuragi, in what is now Nara Prefecture, a documented traditional birthplace and date distinct from an origin the record leaves completely unspecified. His banishment in 699 accordingly falls within his own late sixties by that traditional reckoning, a documented span of decades between his traditional birth and his exile distinct from a punishment recorded as befalling a much younger man.

That the earliest chronicle to mention En no Gyoja records not a miracle but a state banishment for sorcery, explained even there as a matter of envy rather than of proven guilt, marks his exile to Izu Oshima as a documented case where the oldest surviving record of a figure later venerated for supernatural power is, in its own telling, an ordinary act of imperial punishment.

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