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 from accident and bodily gesture. Here, the droplets that flick from Izanagi’s face coalesce into children whose splendour eclipses every earlier generation of kami.
Izanagi’s left eyelid blinks, and from that bright tear stands a goddess whose brilliance turns the river into molten gold. She is Amaterasu Ōmikami, “Great Divinity Who Illuminates Heaven,” destined to be the ancestral sun of emperors. A second blink—this time the right eye—and moonlight pools on the water. A tall, calm youth rises: Tsukuyomi no Mikoto, lord of night. At last Izanagi exhales, a great snort of relief, and from his nostrils roars Susanoo no Mikoto, embodiment of storm-winds and unruly seas.
The father deity, still streaming river-water, regards the trio with mingled awe and caution. Light, reflection, turbulence: they are complementary, yet already suggest tension. He appoints each a domain. Amaterasu will reign over the Plain of High Heaven, Takama-ga-hara, shining upon gods and mortals alike. Tsukuyomi is assigned the night sky, keeping its silver order. Susanoo receives authority over the vast ocean that girdles the earth.
At that moment Izanagi proclaims an iconic line, still quoted in enthronement liturgies:
“O my radiant child, rule thou the High Plain, and may thy light descend upon the reed-plains below.”
He then retires from creative labour and disappears into legend, leaving his children to govern whatever they can keep.
2 Amaterasu: Lady of Ritual and Radiance
Amaterasu’s ascent is swift and orderly. The elder deities present her with two treasures: a gleaming bronze mirror, perfectly round, and a necklace of comma-shaped magatama beads. She hangs the mirror outside her palace gate so that every visitor, mortal or divine, must first catch sight of their own face—and by extension remember their place—before they meet the Sun. Amaterasu’s court quickly becomes the exemplary model of matsuri: offerings calendared with the rice cycle, music in precise metres, words chanted in set cadences. Where her light falls, irrigation ditches are dug, seed-beds levelled, woven cloth bleached. She stands as the principle of visibility, measurement, predictability.
3 Tsukuyomi: The Taciturn Prince of Night
By contrast, Tsukuyomi is spare and reticent. Night in the Kojiki is not a place of malevolence, merely of stillness. The moon-lord seldom speaks; when he does, it is in declarative sentences sharper than any blade. Early chronicles note only one decisive deed. The food goddess Ukemochi summons him to a banquet and produces delicacies by opening her mouth: rice from spit, fish from breath, game from nostril. Tsukuyomi, revolted by what he deems filthy, draws his sword and strikes her dead.
When Amaterasu hears of the murder she is aghast—not only at the loss of a valuable kami of food, but at Tsukuyomi’s unfilial haste. She declares that henceforth she will never share the sky with him; day and night will chase each other but never meet. In mythic logic, the daily setting of the sun and rising of the moon is the bitter fruit of that estrangement.
4 Susanoo: The Weeping Recalcitrant
Susanoo fills the opposite role. He is assigned the seas yet spends his days howling and sobbing. Asked why, he answers: “I long to find my mother in the Land of Yomi.” The seas churn with his tears; tempests batter the fields of Takama-ga-hara.
A council of elder gods judges him disruptive and commands exile. Susanoo begs permission to ascend first to heaven and bid farewell to Amaterasu. They allow it, warily, and he storms skyward—quite literally, trailed by typhoon clouds. Amaterasu sees him coming and bars her palace gate, doubtful of his motives. Susanoo protests his innocence and proposes a ritual oath (uke-hi) to prove good faith.
5 The Sibling Oath and Omens
The oath is curious, half game, half divination. Standing face to face, the two deities exchange regalia. Amaterasu hands Susanoo her string of beads; he crushes them between his molars and spits out three elegant goddess-daughters—omens of purity, he claims, because the beads were her property. In turn Susanoo passes his broadsword to Amaterasu; she bites the blade into fragments and exhales five vigorous male gods. She interprets this as proof that the offspring of her mouth, though born from his sword, belong to her lineage and bode well. By the score of deity-making, Susanoo has technically “won” (three queens outrank five princes), but bragging rights are moot; what matters is intent. For a brief, shining moment brother and sister celebrate harmony.
6 Descent into Mayhem
Harmony, however, does not suit Susanoo’s temperament. As soon as the game ends he begins a spree of vandalism. He floods heavenly rice paddies; he scatters faeces through Amaterasu’s ceremonial hall; he hurls live flayed horses into her weaving-house. One divine weaving maiden is speared by the horse’s hoof and dies. The sun-goddess, traumatised and baffled, retreats into a narrow cave in a cliff and pulls a massive boulder across the entrance. Light vanishes from Heaven and earth alike.
Darkness encourages unruly spirits; crops wither; chaos edges back into the half-made world. The gathering of eight hundred myriad kami—literally all the gods—takes place outside the sealed cave. Wisdom is needed, and it arrives in the form of Ōmoikane, deity of thoughtful counsel.
7 Laughter, Mirrors, and the Return of Light
Ōmoikane orchestrates a masterpiece of psychological theatre. First, the blacksmith god Ame-no-Mahitotsu forges a mirror so polished that it shines like a second sun. Next, the jewel-smith strings new magatama to adorn a leafy sakaki branch. Finally, the irrepressible goddess Ame-no-Uzume overturns a wooden tub, strips half her garments, and begins a ribald, stamping dance upon it. Drums pound; bronze gongs clash; the assembled gods roar with delighted laughter.
Inside the cave Amaterasu hears the uproar—how can there be merriment in a lightless world? Curiosity overcomes grief. She slides the boulder a hand-breadth aside and peers out. Tajikarao, the strong-armed deity lurking near the entrance, seizes her wrist; at the same instant the mirror is angled toward her. She sees radiant light and, mistaking the reflection for another sun-goddess, pauses long enough for Tajikarao to yank her bodily into the open. A sacred straw rope is thrown behind her to bar retreat. Immediately dawn spills across the heavens, and the human world, so recently unborn, is saved from premature extinction.
Susanoo is stripped of beard and fingernails—severe humiliation for a warrior god—fined, and expelled from Takama-ga-hara. His storms roll down to earth, where his saga will continue in another paper. Amaterasu resumes the throne, wizened now by the knowledge that even the sun may need friends to coax it back to duty.
8 Ideas and Motifs Woven Through the Tale
The narrative insists on balance. Amaterasu’s ritual precision, Tsukuyomi’s cool judgement, and Susanoo’s wild impulse are not enemies by design; they are complementary muscles of the cosmos. When one overreaches—Tsukuyomi in slaughter, Susanoo in vandalism—harmony buckles.
Purity and pollution re-emerge. Susanoo’s dung-throwing is not childish mischief; it is a symbolic assault on the ordered rites that guarantee fertility. Similarly, Amaterasu’s withdrawal plunges creation back toward the inert chaos that preceded the gods. Salvation arrives not through violence but through ritual performance: the mirror stands for self-knowledge, the beads for lineage, Uzume’s dance for communal joy.
Another motif is the power of reflection. Amaterasu is lured by the sight of her own face—she literally becomes aware of herself as needed by others. In later Japanese thought, especially in Zen and in tea-ceremony aesthetics, the notion that a surface (water, lacquer, bronze) can reveal truth recurs again and again.
Finally, the episode underscores the importance of laughter. The eight hundred myriad gods do not break the sun’s depression with sermons; they break it with a party. That insight—that collective mirth can dispel individual gloom—lies behind countless village festivals where bawdy jokes jostle side-by-side with solemn offerings.
9 Cultural, Historical, and Modern Resonance
Culturally, this triad solidifies the charter for Japanese kingship. The regalia bestowed by Izanagi—mirror, jewels, eventually Susanoo’s sword—become the Three Sacred Treasures still invoked at every imperial accession.
Ritually, shrine dancers today perform kagura masked as Uzume, stamping on a hollow drum that echoes the overturned tub. Village farmers copy Susanoo’s scolding when they hurl ashes over winter fields, symbolically “dirtying” the soil to spur new growth.
Historically, court scribes of the eighth century used the sun-goddess myth to explain why the emperor alone might mediate between Heaven and the rice-growing populace. Buddhist monks, arriving later, reinterpreted the Rock-Cave scene as an allegory of deluded mind requiring the mirror of meditation to see its own Buddha-nature.
In modern media the sibling trio has hardly rested. Anime series turn Susanoo into rebel anti-heroes, Shintō rock concerts stage Uzume-style dances with electric shamisen, and science museums teach solar eclipse phenomena by screening the Rock-Cave legend before the astronomy lesson—showing that myth and science are not adversaries but narrative partners.
10 Prelude to the Next Paper
Susanoo now tumbles earthward, deprived of rank, his anger still hot. What will he do with a storm-god’s strength and no celestial home? He will wander Japan’s western provinces, meet a weeping family, and face a serpent with eight heads and eight tails. In that encounter lie both terror and the forging of the sword Kusanagi, destined to complete the imperial regalia. Those events—full of river-wine, dragon blood, and redemption—await in Paper 3.
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