165 CHAPTER 9 The Power of Writing in Deguchi Nao’s Ofudesaki Avery Morrow INTRODUCTION In 1892 Deguchi Nao (1837–1918), an impoverished Japanese widow who had suffered for decades in an arranged marriage with an alcoholic husband began hearing voices and channeling spirits. She was told that the world was about to be destroyed for its disobedience to the gods called kami in Japanese, that she had been chosen to be the medium of a kami named Ushitora no Konjin, that Konjin would try to save as many people as he could from the cataclysm and usher in a golden age, and that her little village of Ayabe would become the center of the world. For several years, Nao attracted the scorn of her neighbors, was imprisoned and continued a life of poverty with no visible blessings from the kami. But in 1899, an itinerant spiritualist named Ueda Kisaburǀ (later Deguchi Onisaburǀ, 1871–1948) somehow became attracted to her cause. Even as he attempted to change the direction of her mis- sion, through new revelations, he was woven into a divine message much larger than his own, and despite Nao’s lack of education or social stand- ing, she ended up becoming the co-founder of a major religious move- ment named Oomoto. She accomplished all this principally through a © The Author(s) 2017 I. Bårdsen Tøllefsen and C. Giudice (eds.), Female Leaders in New Religious Movements, Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-61527-1_9 A. Morrow () University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan