Amaterasu Omikami

Figure from Japanese mythology, also known as Ôhiru Memuchi. The central figure in the myths and legends recorded in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, she is the goddess considered to have been the ancestress of the Japanese imperial family and, as the deity enshrined in the Inner Shrine of the Grand Shrines of Ise, is accorded greater respect than any other deity in the Japanese pantheon.

The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki relate three theories concerning her birth:

• • 1. She was born as child of the deities Izanagi and Izanami.
  • 2. She was born when the deity Izanagi took into his hand a nickled mirror.
  • 3. Izanagi returned from the underworld (Yomi no Kuni) and was bathing to purify himself; she aws born as he washed his left eye.

The myth also relates that Amaterasu had a brother, the god Susano-o, an unruly deity who committed an act of violence in Takamagahara (the Heavenly Plain, abode of the gods), thereby so enraging Amaterasu that she shut herself up in a cave, whereupon darkness covered the whole world. She is, thus, a kind of sun goddess also, and it seems likely that in this myth the imperial family, gradually building up the ancient Japanese state as agriculture developed, sought to relate its own ancestors to the sun--the farmer's greatest blessing--thereby giving itself a supreme position in its attempt to exert control over the other powerful families.

Text taken from Seiichi Iwao's Biographical Dictionary of Japanese History