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 planting, and ritual purity are existentially entwined—this was more than vandalism; it was a cosmic insult.
Amaterasu’s response is profoundly human: she feels unsafe. Gathering what dignity she can, she withdraws to a narrow grotto in the flank of the High Celestial Plain. The entrance is a rough boulder which she drags across the mouth. Inside, she crouches in pitch-black silence, the first being in creation to suffer what we would call depression. Outside, Takama-ga-hara dims; on earth the sun disappears. Frost grips summer paddies, demons wander in half-lit forests, and ancestral spirits lose their compass. The myth says simply, “All became eternal night.”
2 — A Council in the Dark
Panic scatters the lesser gods, but eventually eight hundred myriad kami converge at the cave entrance. Torches sputter, casting red ribs of light across worried faces. In that anxious ring stands Ōmoikane, reverend deity of deep thought, chosen to devise a remedy. Beside him are:
- Ishikoridome, the divine metal-smith whose hands remember the birth of bronze;
- Ame-no-Mahitotsu, one-eyed patron of bellows and forge;
- Tajikarao, the giant with arms thick as cedar trunks;
- Ame-no-Uzume, goddess of dawn and delight.
Ōmoikane speaks softly, outlining a plan that is equal parts festival, mystery play, and psychological trap. In modern terms he orchestrates the world’s first event production.
3 — Forging the Bait
Ishikoridome and Ame-no-Mahitotsu set up a forge beside the river of Heaven. Sparks sheet the darkness red-gold. They cast a mirror, round as the future imperial chrysanthemum and polished until the stars wheel within its face. Meanwhile the jewel-smiths drill and polish comma-shaped magatama beads, stringing them on a fresh-cut branch of sakaki, a sacred evergreen whose glossy leaves already glimmer like captured moonlight.
The branch is dressed with shide—zig-zag paper strips that mark a holy boundary—and the mirror hangs at its core. All is readied before the cave mouth, lit by flickering torch-trees.
4 — Uzume Dances
Ōmoikane now signals Ame-no-Uzume. She overturns a washtub, steps atop it, and begins a dance that manages to be reverent, lewd, and hypnotic at once. Her breasts swing free; she stamps until the tub booms like a hollow drum. Hip-shakes punctuate guttural shouts; strands of hair whip the air. The assembled gods, at first scandalised, soon burst into laughter—the first real laughter since Amaterasu’s retreat. The sound ricochets down the stone corridor of the cave.
Inside, the sun-goddess stiffens. How can merriment exist without her radiance? Curiosity, that most human of divine traits, flickers where pride and fear have reigned.
5 — The Mirror Moment
Amaterasu shifts the boulder a finger-width and peers out. Tajikarao, muscles coiled, waits in the shadow. The mirror, catching torchlight, flashes. Amaterasu sees a blazing figure reflected and, not recognising herself, believes another sun has arisen while she sulked. She slides the stone further for a clearer look. In that instant Tajikarao’s hands shoot forward; he wrenches the rock aside and hauls her bodily into the open.
A collective gasp, then a surging cheer. Daylight fountains across Heaven, spills down to earth, melts frost, scatters demons. Before Amaterasu can bolt backwards, Futotama the ritualist flings a shimenawa—a braided rice-straw rope—across the threshold. It is the first sacred barrier; once crossed, even a goddess must not re-enter the darkness of her own accord.
Amaterasu stands dazzled, half-angry, half-relieved, watching her mirror image brighten. Then, seeing the assembled faces—laughing, crying, bowing—she comprehends the depth of communal dependence. Her exile is over.
6 — Justice and Re-ordering
Susanoo, caught on the edge of the crowd, is seized. His beard is shaved, his fingernails torn out—humiliations for a warrior deity who prized his wild mane and claw-hands. His sword, bow, and arrows are stripped away. Fines of silk, rice, and jewels are levied to repair heavenly fields. Finally, he is expelled from Takama-ga-hara altogether, cast down the Heavenly River to roam the earth below. That descent will yield new legends—dragons, swords, marriages—but the immediate danger has passed.
7 — Themes in Deep Relief
Light and Self-recognition
The mirror trick is often explained as vanity, but traditional commentators stress self-awareness: Amaterasu sees that she is not merely light for herself but light for all. In Shintō shrines today a mirror sits in the innermost sanctuary; worshippers bow before their own reflection—acknowledging both the deity and the spark within themselves.
Ritual versus Force
No weapon pries Amaterasu out; instead ritual theatre—music, dance, decoration—restores balance. The story suggests that social harmony in Japan is maintained less by conquest than by ceremony and shared joy.
Communal Laughter as Healing
Uzume’s bawdy performance releases tension that logical argument cannot. Rural kagura troupes still begin their all-night dances with comic sketches modelled on Uzume, believing laughter invites the kami as warmly as any hymn.
Boundary-Making
The shimenawa thrown across the cave mouth becomes the prototype for every straw rope at a shrine torii or a sumō ring. A simple twist of straw says: “Pollution stays out; purity abides within.” Myth gives that rope its authority.
8 — Cultural and Historical Resonance
Shrine Geography
The town of Takachiho in Kyūshū points tourists to the sheer gorge of Ama-no-Iwato, said to be the site of Amaterasu’s cave. Nearby nightly kagura performances recreate Uzume’s dance; villagers alternate roles, reaffirming old solidarity in modern tourism garb.
Court Ceremony
Every autumn the Emperor conducts the Kannamesai, offering first-fruits rice to Amaterasu at the Grand Shrine of Ise. Scholars link this rite directly to the Rock-Cave myth: grain, threatened by endless night, is returned in gratitude for surviving sunlight.
Performing Arts
Classical Noh includes Uzume no Mai, a mask dance where comic lewdness edges into sacred ecstasy. Contemporary choreographers quote its hip swings in avant-garde pieces and J-pop videos alike, a long echo of that washtub stage.
Popular Storytelling
Anime such as Naruto name jutsu after the cave (Izanagi, Izanami) and adapt Uzume’s dance into character moves; video game Ōkami lets players literally roll back the boulder, painting sunlight across a darkened sky.
9 — Philosophical Overtones
The Rock-Cave episode is sometimes read through Mahāyāna Buddhist lenses, imported centuries after the myth’s compilation. In that reading Amaterasu’s cave stands for the deluded mind; the mirror is prajñā (wisdom) revealing one’s true nature; Uzume’s dance is compassionate skilful means. Whether or not the compilers intended such allegory, later priests and poets found it naturally compatible.
In modern psychology the tale reads as a study in trauma and social re-integration. Amaterasu experiences violation, retreats into isolation, and is coaxed back through community support, humour, and a controlled re-entry ritual. Therapeutic parallels are striking: safety, curiosity, mirroring, boundary-setting.
10 — Epilogue: The Rope That Still Holds
Stand before any country shrine and you will see a shimenawa above the lintel. That rope whispers the memory of a time when the world almost lost its light. Walk inside and you face a mirror: the invitation to recognise your own glint of divinity, lest you too succumb to the cave of despair. And if you visit on festival night, drums will thunder, dancers will whirl, laughter will peel across the precinct—the oldest medicine of all, first mixed by Uzume atop an overturned tub.
With light restored and Susanoo banished, the sky is calm—yet the sea god now strides the earth below. His first stop will be Izumo, where a weeping family huddles before a river dragon with eight heads and eight tails. Paper 4 tells how a disgraced storm-lord and a barrel of sacred rice-wine changed the fate of that province and forged the sword called Kusanagi.
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