I know it should look more like this or this but I just looked at the chibi art and couldn't not put it up.
So a short while ago I talked about Istaroth because she's the God of Time everybody was looking for and making random theories. Well there's plenty more to the story and it's all really interesting so let's get to it!
You can probably tell from the picture above this will have something to do with a girl named Tokoyo. (and not Tokyo Google! Stahp autocorrecting my searches! [emoji])
But before we get to the girl let's get into a little mythology. In Shinto belief Tokoyo is 常世 which means a state of unchanging. (Eternity! Kinda but no.) It is the world of the dead opposite of the world of the living or Utsushiyo 現世. (this also means world of the present in Chinese) Tokoyo is in a permanent state of Evernight which is why it can also be written as 常夜 with 夜 meaning night. And where is Tokoyo supposedly located? In the sea. Or sometimes under the sea. And so our new area Enkanomiya is also called Tokoyokoku or the nation of Tokoyo. (but the in game reason is about the girl so let's continue)
A while back I talked about Tsurumi and how it's based on Ainu culture. Shintoism as Japan practices it today mixed in old Ainu beliefs. Kami could have come from the Ainu Kamuy for example. Well it may in fact also have mixed in some Okinawan beliefs since the under the sea idea of Tokoyo comes from them. (I talked about how Watatsumi is based on the people of Kyushu.)
So now we can get into Tokoyo the girl. While the parallels of real world Tokoyo match up with what Enkanomiya is the reason it is called Tokoyokoku in game is because Tokoyo is one of Enkanomiya's names for Istaroth.
In this Okinawan myth a girl named Tokoyo lived with her father Oribe Shima. One day Shima upsets the Tenno who is sick so he is exiled to a group of islands. But Tokoyo doesn't want to be away from her father so she decides to track him down. Somewhere in the middle of her journey she finds a priest about to push a girl off a cliff into the sea. She takes it upon herself to stop him and he explains that he is sacrificing the girl to Okuninushi as part of an annual ritual. Since it's been a while from when Tokoyo started her journey she was beginning to lose hope on finding her father so she decides to be the sacrifice instead. She dives into the water but she's also carrying a knife with her. Down in the sea she finds the land of dragons and there's also a statue of the Tenno down there. The dragons are using the statue to curse the person it represents (ie the Tenno) and that's why he was sick. Tokoyo uses her knife to kill one of the dragons and drags the statue back to the surface. With the Tenno cured he decides to free Oribe Shima and father and daughter are reunited.
What the hell did you just read I hear you mumbling.
I feel like this story was made with reference to the place Tokoyo. So the land Tokoyo is said to be in the sea and in Okinawan beliefs it's under the sea. The reason why it's under the sea is because sometimes they link it with the domain of sea dragons thanks to Chinese mythology. There's Ao bing who is a water dragon enemy in the story of Nezha which got tons of hype in recent years thanks to the hit movie. It even got a steampunk reimagining last year. I think the evil water dragon cursing the Tenno's statue thing came from this myth.
But the big reference here is Okuninushi and Tokoyo saving the Tenno. Okuninushi is one of the big gods in Shinto. Originally he ruled over the lands of Japan before the time of man and presided over the other terrestrial gods. When man is born he is ordered by the other big gods to abdicate. He is given a new post as ruler of Tokoyo while Amaterasu's grandson Ninigi starts the imperial line of Japan.
After the recent Archon Quest I realized the point of Genshin seems to be progressing from the era of gods to the Human Era and this myth is literally that. It feels like MiHoYo took this myth and applied it to the pieces of lore we've gotten from Enkanomiya.
In the old days gods were everywhere. There were also "dragons" in the form of elemental vishaps. Enkanomiya was a human civilization that existed during that time and then it was sunk into the sea. Phanes and 3 of 4 shades didn't notice or didn't care but Istaroth aka Tokoyo (girl version) did and descended to Enkanomiya to help the humans. Eventually Aberaku was able to repel the Dragonheirs (our Bathysmal Vishaps that swim around like water dragons) crediting who he accomplished to Tokoyo. (Seriously they should just call Dainichi Mikoshi the "knife of Tokoyo") The rest of Teyvat was ruled over by the Seven who then were subjugated by Phanes aka Celestia. As time went on humans started to question the gods and now are taking over for the gods the difference being our Okuninushi doesn't want to leave his post so we're going to have to kick his ass all the way to Tokoyo ourselves.
I am just astounded by how much mythology MiHoYo had to go through to come up with all this. I can't even find original Japanese sources for this myth. It's all English retellings by western mythologists.
Tips and Tricks from a Super Casual Genshin f2p
