The Godai, the "five greats", are the five elements of Japanese esoteric thought, inherited from the Buddhist mahabhuta of India by way of China and given a distinctive form in the Shingon school of esoteric Buddhism. Chi, earth, is the first and densest, the element of solidity, stability and resistance, the ground, the body, all that has fixed form and cannot easily be moved, and by extension steadiness, stubbornness and confidence. In the five-element pagoda, the gorinto, that marks graves and reliquaries across Japan, earth is the lowest, cubic stone at the base, supporting the sphere, pyramid, crescent and jewel above it.
The scheme is also famous from Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings of the seventeenth century, whose chapters are named for the five. The Godai are an old and living part of Japanese Buddhist and cultural tradition, descending through the esoteric Buddhist transmission rather than being a modern construction, and earth is their foundation in both the literal and the symbolic sense.