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Arahitogami

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Arahitogami (現人神) is a Japanese word, meaning a god who is a human being. This word appears first in Kojiki, but is assumed to have been used before this book. The most well-known usage of this word would be in Japan before 1945, until the end of the Second World War. In those days State Shinto (Kokka Shintō) applied this word to the Emperor Hirohito and required the Japanese people to obey absolutely and have loyalty to the Emperor as a god. Later, Hirohito himself renounced this conception in the Ningen-sengen, and claimed his relation to the people did not rely on such a mythological idea but on a historically developed family-like reliance. (However, the Ningen-sengen can be interpreted in a way which, while renouncing absolute power, doesn't actually deny the mythological origins and divinity of the emperor in a religious sense.)

See also