Munetada Kurozumi was a religious leader of the late Edo period and founder of the Shinto sect known as Kurozumi-kyo.
Background
Munetada Kurozumi was born in 1780. He was the son of a Shinto priest of the province of Bizen. As young man he was very devoted to his parents, but lost both of them in an epidemic in 1812. The shock caused him to become ill himself, and for a time his condition was critical. On the eleventh day of the eleventh lunar month of 1814, the day of the winter solstice, when he was worshiping the sun at dawn, he experienced a mystical sense of unity with the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and his illness was thereafter cured. This event is referred to as Temmei-jikiju, the "Direct Revelation of the Heavenly Command,” and the day marks the founding of the Kurozuini religion.
Career
Kurozumi practiced the healing of sickness through prayer and gathered a group of believers about him.
In 1825 he began the observance of various religious exercises, among them a thousand-day period of withdrawal within the shrine, and laid down a set of rules for the daily life of believers entitled Nichinichi kanai kokoroe no koto. In 1833 he cured Ikcda Narimasa, former lord of the domain of Okayama, from an illness, and thereafter his social position w'as secure. In 1841 he turned over his religious duties to his eldest son, Munenobu, and went into retirement.
Religion
At the same time, he emphasized the importance of the traditional virtues taught by Confucianism and for this reason gained considerable influence among members of the samurai class, who were traditionally trained in Confucianism.
Views
In his theology he stressed the importance of Amaterasu Omikami as the source of all creation and posited the essential unity of god and man. He taught that the human heart is an emanation of that of the deity, and by purifying it, one can be freed from all present ills.