The Kojiki relates that a Chinese emperor sent a Confucian teacher and The Analectsto Japan around 400 CE, although this account is often disputed.

(A ruling family used its purported divine descent from Ametarasu to help consolidate power.) But around the same time, the movement of peoples and culture between Japan and the continent was introducing new ideas to the Japanese: Over centuries, a belief system centered on the sun goddess Ametarasu spread from the centers of power. Material evidence of Japan’s prehistorical Jomon culture dates as early as 40k BCE. Like many creation narratives, The Kojiki takes place long before its people had any means of writing The earliest events of The Kojiki ostensibly take place before or during the Jomon Period.

The sun as a goddess is just one of the moments in Japanese mythology where a female figure takes on a position of importance, or even supremacy. Most other mythologies with women as sun deities are what you might call “out of the mainstream” today: early Egyptian, Canaanite, Celtic, pre-Islamic Arabian… In the mythologies familiar to most Westerners, the sun deity is male, often paired with a female moon goddess. Let me note here that Ametarasu is a part of an elite group-the sun anthropomorphized as a female, rather than as a male.

(Purification is an important facet of Japanese religion.) Washing the filth from his body begets new kami, including the sun goddess Ametarasu. Izanagi then rushes to a river to purify himself. He runs away and seals the entrance to Yomi: “as they stood there with the boulder between them, they declared themselves divorced” ( The Kojiki).Įnraged, Izanami vows that she will now kill 1,000 people a day Izanagi counters he will build 1,500 birthing huts every day to thwart her. Izanagi breaks his promise not to look at her, only to discover that she has become a rotting corpse. Sadly, it is too late for Izanami-she has already eaten food from the underworld. Izanagi kills his newborn son in rage and grief, then goes to Yomi, the land of the dead, to search for his wife. When Izanagi beckons first, they begin to give birth to the Japanese archipelago and many of the kami behind its more significant natural phenomena.Įventually, Izanami dies giving birth to the fire god. When Izanami beckons first, all their offspring are malformed. This ritual is presumably why these kami (gods, for lack of a succinct alternative) are He Who Beckoned and She Who Beckoned. Before they couple, they perform a simple ritual, passing around a pillar and greeting each other in turn. As the first anthropomorphized gods, Izanami and Izanagi are also Japan’s first sexed and gendered gods.

Natsuo kirino