The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo

This is Tenrikyo's own official biography of its foundress, Nakayama Miki, addressed by her honorific title Oyasama, translated into English by the Tenrikyo Church Headquarters Overseas Department from the 1956 Japanese original. It is the tradition's authorized account of her life, her revelations from God the Parent beginning in 1838, and the persecution she endured under the Meiji era authorities, written to transmit the movement's own understanding of its founding rather than to test it against outside evidence. This record cites it as evidence of what Tenrikyo itself teaches about Nakayama Miki's life, not as independent historical verification of the events it narrates; a claim resting on an outside academic reading of the same events needs a source such as Ellwood's alongside it. Its hagiographic purpose is stated here rather than left for a reader to infer from the publisher alone.