Moreya

Moreya or Moriya (洩矢神, Moriya- / Moreya-no-Kami) is a Japanese god who appears in various myths and legends of the Suwa region in Nagano Prefecture (historical Shinano Province). The most famous of such stories is that of his battle against Takeminakata, the god of the Grand Shrine of Suwa (Suwa Taisha).

Moriya is regarded as the mythical ancestor of the Moriya clan (守矢氏), a priestly family that formerly served in the Upper Suwa Shrine (上社, Kamisha), one of the two sub-shrines that make up Suwa Taisha. In addition, he is venerated as a local tutelary deity (ubusunagami) in a shrine in Okaya City near the Tenryū River, which in later variants of the aforementioned myth is identified as the place where Takeminakata and Moriya fought each other.

Local historians have long interpreted the story of the conflict between the two deities as the mythicization of a historical event in which a powerful local clan that ruled the Lake Suwa region and its vicinity (identified with the Moriya) was defeated by invaders who wrested control of the area (identified in turn with the Suwa clan, the high priestly lineage of the Upper Suwa Shrine that claimed to be Takeminakata's descendants), although a number of scholars have recently argued that it may actually be of later origin, heavily influenced by or outright based on medieval legends concerning the conflict between Prince Shōtoku and the anti-Buddhist ōmuraji Mononobe no Moriya, who may have been the inspiration for the god's name.