FUJITA HIMIKO, RYŪGŪ Otohime (the Dragon Palace Princess) as she is also called, is the foundress of the religious group known as Ryūgū Kazoku, or the Dragon Palace Family. She founded the group in October 1973, soon after a dramatic initiatory vision revealed to her the task she was destined to perform in life, and the message she was to bring to the world. The Ryūgū Kazoku should, therefore, be counted among the shin-shin-shūkyō, or ‘new, new’ religions, which made their appearance dunng the 1970s and 1980s, and which are readily distinguishable from the older ‘new’ religions which arose after 1945.

Himiko's group is of particular interest today insofar as her message is, unbeknown to herself, curiously consonant with much that is occurnngm the West. This message for mankind is clearly centred on the coming Age of the Goddess, megamisama no jidai. This kairos she claims to be close at hand, despite all appearances to the contrary. The goddess is about to come at last into her own. Having been for centuries quenched by hard, war-like, masculine divinities, who are accorded paramount status beyond their deserts in monotheisms throughout the world, the goddess will once more anse and bathe the world in the millennial joys of her light and love.

While proclaiming such a message, Himiko seems for the most part unaware of the recent surge in the West of literature about the goddess. The remarkable spate of books, papers, conferences and workshops on the goddess and her myth, the work of Mana Gimbutas, Robert Graves, Anne Banng, Miranda Green and many others, has so far neither influenced nor interested her. Her own supernatural revelation has taught her all she needs to know.

This dramatic initiation took place at 11.30 am on 7 October 1973. She was standing outside a large cave near Kumamoto, Kyushu, in company with a woman ascetic called Shioyama, when with extraordinary suddenness the goddess Amaterasu Ōmikami appeared to her in the unusual form of a mermaid. With her fish tail, the goddess gave Himiko a slap on the cheek, and announced that now was the moment of her true arrival, her true emergence from the cave.