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Looking under terms that include かみ/神, I was interested to find "八十神" defined
as "many gods; many deities". Jisho.org lists it as an "archaism", though. I
see the term appear in [this Japanese Wikipedia
page](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%9B%BD%E4%B8%BB%E3%81%AE%E7%A5%9E%E8%A9%B1)
(thanks Google!), but I can't start to understand it really, and it appears
only else in Chinese. I'm really curious behind the story of this term: why
80? I'm guessing so Chinese of Japanese legend?
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2017-07-24T03:02:35.083
51673
2017-07-24T05:16:41.620
1823
question
kanji etymology
Why is "many gods" (八十神) exactly eighty?
In archaic Japanese, the numbers 8, 80, 800, 8000,... were used as vague
pronouns for big numbers. Compare how modern English speakers use "dozens of
～", which usually does not strictly refer to the multiples of 12.

The word 八十神 is relatively uncommon. The concept of "many/countless gods" in
archaic Japanese mythology is more frequently referred to as 八百万【やおよろず】の神,
literally "8 million gods". Accoring to Wikipedia:

> ### [Kami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kami)
>
> There are considered to be three main variations of kami, amatsu-kami ("the
> heavenly deities"), kunitsu-kami ("the gods of the earthly realm"), and ya-
> o-yorozu no kami (八百万の神, countless kami). ("八百万" literally means eight
> million, but idiomatically it expresses "uncountably many" and "all
> around"—like many East Asian cultures, the Japanese often use the number 8,
> representing the cardinal and ordinal directions, to symbolize ubiquity.)
> These classifications are not considered strictly divided, due to the fluid
> and shifting nature of kami, but are instead held as guidelines for grouping
> kami.
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2017-07-24T03:15:59.477
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2017-07-24T05:16:41.620
2017-07-24T05:16:41.620
5010
5010
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answer