Chapter 179
If you were to ask Japanese people, “Name one god of knowledge,” the name that would probably come up first and foremost would be Sugawara no Michizane, who is enshrined at Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine.
However, if I were to ask you to name one of the gods of knowledge in Japanese mythology, his name would probably not come up.
This is because Japanese mythology usually refers to a series of mythological stories starting from the creation of heaven and earth in Kojiki and Nihonshoki, and the name of Sugawara no Michizane, a man of later times, does not appear there.
Omoikane is probably the most famous of the “gods of knowledge” in Japanese mythology.
The story of how he got Amaterasu made Amaterasu dance naked to attract the attention of the gods and then used the power of Amaterasu to pull Amaterasu out of hiding. Omoikane is the one who gave this trick to the eight million gods.
By the way, in addition to Omoikane, there are two other relatively famous gods of knowledge in Japanese mythology. They are Uwaharu and Kuebiko.
The former, Uwaharu, is one of Omoikane’s sons, so the father and son are both ‘gods of knowledge’.
Uwaharu and Omoikane worked together to create a curriculum to teach the Japanese language to people more efficiently, and to create textbooks to go with it.
Omoikane humbly said, “It’s still too rough to be called a study book,” but the textbook she and Uwaharu created together was very easy for Yuri to understand.
Despite her modesty, the textbook was of a high enough standard that it could be considered a finished product. ――Yuri passed the trial copies of the textbook to the children of <Rindou> and tried to mass-produce them.
At the time the trial copy was sent around, the children had already completed the letterpress machine that Yuri had instructed them to build, which was compatible with Japanese.
Thanks to this, mass production of trial books would begin immediately. Thanks to the cooperation of the children of <Nadeshiko>, who had the <Maid Bag> skill, the printed books were already printed the next day.
And to my horror, at this point, the “Educational Facility” facility has already been completed in Shinto City.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen such a thing. It took only three days from the time Yuri instructed <Kikyou> children to build the educational facility to the time it was completed.
Immediately, Yuri drew up a formal document to transfer the ownership of the educational facility to Omoikane. This was to have the educational facility itself become Omoikane’s domain.
After receiving the letter, Omoikane named the educational facility “Eight Wise School”.
(TN: Eight Wise School =『八意塾』)
Although “Omoikane” is often written as “Eight Meaning and God”. This “Eight Wills” is a word that, simply put, has a meaning similar to “Omniscience.”
(TN: Pls fact check yourself.)
It would be an appropriate name to give to a place where knowledge is learned.
――The place for teaching study has been completed, and the textbook has been completed.
If this is the case, the only thing left to do is to repeat the test. After making this decision, Yuri asked the other ‘concubine’ besides Roselotte, that is, Estoa, Sofia, Lizelia, and Yubel, to attend the “Eight Wise School”.
The purpose was to find out how long it would take for them to master the Japanese language.
As it turned out, Sofia had mastered Japanese perfectly in one day, but this was unlikely to be helpful at all because she was just crazy.
The other three took three days for Estoa, six days for Yubel, and seven days for Lizelia to reach the stage where Omoikane acknowledged that they had mastered Japanese.
――The pace was much faster than Yuri had expected.
This time, the class time was limited to two hours a day. Amazingly, all of them mastered Japanese in less than a week.
Aside from Sofia, the reason why Estoa’s learning speed is so fast is probably that she’s been going to the Labyrinth and has grown her level considerably.
Level growth not only improves physical abilities but also mental abilities such as [Wisdom]. The benefits of this have been demonstrated.
(If this is the case, then it should be safe to proceed to the next stage of the test.)
With this in mind, Yuri requested a meeting with the High Priest Conrad in search of the next student to attend the “Eight Wise School”.
Yuri wanted to make sure that even the young boys and girls living in the orphanage she was managing could master the Japanese language without any problems.