Onisaburo Deguchi

Who was Onisaburo Deguchi?

Onisaburo Deguchi, born Ueda Kisaburō 上田 喜三郎, is considered the second spiritual leader of the Oomoto religious movement in Japan.

Onisaburo had studied Honda Chikaatsu's "Spirit Studies", he also learned to mediate spirit possession from Honda's disciple Nagasawa Katsutate in Shizuoka. He met the founder of Omotokyo in 1898 and in 1899 they established the Kinmeikai, later called Kinmei Reigakkai. In 1900 Kisaburō married Nao's fifth daughter Sumi and adopted the name Deguchi Onisaburō. Oomoto teaches that the guardian spirit of Nao is Amaterasu, described as a male spirit in a female body, and Onisaburo's spirit is Susanowo, a female spirit in a male body.

In 1908 he and Deguchi Nao founded the Dai Nihon Shūseikai which in 1913 became Taihonkyō and in 1916 the Kōdō Ōmoto. In 1923, he learned Esperanto, an international planned language, and introduced it to the activities of Oomoto.

He is remembered as a jovial patriarch of that school, and is best known to Westerners as a teacher and religious instructor of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido.

A believer in the Oomoto maxim that it was humanity's duty to move forward together, bringing about a new age of existence on Earth, Onisaburo went to great lengths to promote the syncretic faith preached by Nao Deguchi. He wrote the Reikai Monogatari, an 81-volume work which covered his alleged travels into the spiritual planes of existence, as well as many other theologically permeated stories which expounded on numerous Oomoto spiritual ideals.