Category: Japanese Myth

1 — A Wild Cub in the Imperial Litter Long after Jimmu’s sun-bound march, the Yamato court has thickened into lineage after lineage of princely timber. From one such branch comes Prince Ōusu, second son of Emperor Keikō. Where elder brother Prince Ōusu-no-Miko is measured and courtly, Ōusu himself is volcanic: wrestling palace guards for…

1 ― A Prince Looks East The story thus far has carried the imperial blood-line from Heaven to Hyūga: creation, descent, sea-marriage. Yet Kyūshū, though fertile, is a cul-de-sac. Trade routes, metal ores, and vast plains lie across the Inland Sea in the broad bowl of Honshū. Ugayafukiaezu’s youngest son, Hiko-hohodemi no Mikoto, known posthumously…

1 — Brothers at Odds Ninigi’s three sons grow to manhood beneath Kyūshū’s peaks. Twin talents differentiate the elder two. Hoderi—“Fire-Shine”—revels in deep-sea fishing; his line rarely returns without silver flanks flashing. Hohodemi—“Fire-Subside”—is hunter of upland game, a marksman whose arrows never miss boar or stag. One spring they trade skills for sport. Hoderi takes…

1 ― A New Problem in Heaven With Susanoo tamed and the sun stable once more, Amaterasu Ōmikami surveys the reed-plain below. Earth is fertile yet fractious: rival clans vie for river mouths, mountains resound with half-tamed spirits, and no single order binds the land. Amaterasu concludes that Heaven’s radiance must govern Earth directly. But…

1 — A God in Free-Fall Cast out of Heaven for vandalising the sun-goddess’s realm, Susanoo-no-Mikoto plummets along the Milky River, storms raging in his wake. Beard shorn, nails torn, divine weapons confiscated, he is all raw nerve and thunder. As his bare feet strike the reed-plain of Izumo (modern Shimane), the sky clears for…

1 — Setting the Fuse The previous paper ended with Susanoo’s wild spree in Heaven: flooding rice-fields, hurling dung, and finally pitching a flayed celestial horse through his sister’s weaving-house. One court maiden died of shock, looms splintered, and sacred cloth lay fouled with blood and hide. In the culture of early Japan—where weaving, rice…

1 After the River of Purification The first paper ended with Izanagi wading into the Tachibana River to scour away the stench of Yomi. That scene matters, because it is in the very act of cleansing—water sluicing from brow, cheeks, shoulders—that three radiant beings are born. Creation in Japanese myth is rarely tidy: it bubbles up…

1. A Drifting Chaos Becomes Cosmos The Kojiki opens, famously, with a vision of formlessness: “In the ages when Heaven and Earth first parted, they were like floating oil. Silently, softly, something light and purer rose, and something heavy and turbid sank.” From that silent ferment five abstract deities crystallise in single blinding instants. They…