Amaterasu and the Japanese Creation Myth - Mythillogical

[Music] say the line [Music] Charles so crofty it's been a while hasn't it it I hadn't noticed God yeah it's yes sorry to everyone at home um we thought we might end up having a little bit of a Hiatus for the reason that spoiler cofty had to move back from Japan uh and is going straight back to Japan in a couple of weeks time as well so this is going to make things interesting yeah I'm glow hopping a little bit uh was not intending to no but but thankfully in that time we've managed to get back together to actually try and record uh for once but on novelty that is in this modern day and age um yeah apologies folks about how the release release schedule has been like recently we will try and fix things it's just the end of last year beginning of this year just a little bit of an awkward time for us so hello and welcome to mythological the podcast that talks about all things mythical folklore and just stuff that we generally find too interesting uh I'm Charles I'm here joined by my what Japanese deity should I name after this time uh yeah my my genely heavenly co-host cofty oh thank you Charles yeah because I just couldn't I couldn't remember the word CI at that exactly there we go yeah um I know I feel more like a yorky this morning yeah not slept yeah been like been an ogre or whatever but um yeah it's uh it's been an interesting time we've had our Christmas break we I think at one point we were going to try and do something on Santa but I think that might have to wait for another year unfortunately yeah yeah hopefully next time yeah and uh been saying that for three years to Sidetrack things immediately as we're always good at doing this is like the I think only the second time in the entire history of the podcast we've managed to record in person and it's been what three and a half years not since King Arthur episode 3 episode three I've not seen you in person since Ireland for your droids video yeah so that's near two years so might be more than two years two two years last month two years last month wow yeah it's amazing how time just seems to go faster and faster the older you get I went nine hours back in time so I've regained some regained a little bit and I don't know about you I just think people don't age as quickly these days now as we used to I don't know I feel like I am as the person here with the grying sideburns and the growing growing stubble yeah but uh we should probably actually talk about some mythology then cofy and we are after all talking about some proper mythology today we're not messing around with Crypts or folklore or anything like that ironically we wanted to do this episode when you were actually in Japan yeah this was going to be my first one from Japan not my first one back but here we are so we are today going to be talking about amaraso yeah we're going to be talking about amatarasu the Japanese Su goddess and we're also going to be kind of by way of extension outlining the whole Japanese creation me aren we yeah is a bit difficult to talk about her without going into her parentage the creation of Japan and the Japanese Emperors we will warn there may be some political Dimensions to today's episode yeah there is a distinct possibility I will not be allowed back into Japan yeah you have insulted the emperor uh yeah it's um we'll do our best to uh stay on topic by which I mean we will fail but yeah it's going to be interesting we have kind of touched on some of this information slightly from today in terms of both the yo-kai episode that we did before and I think the dragons episode we did yeah we did it did come up in dragons as well particularly susano's story so that will be making a bit of a repeat appearance in probably a bit more detail this time um I think I could have sworn at some point we've talked about isanami and isagi at some point as well I think that came up in yo-kai yeah it was in y because of the distinction between Camy and yo-kai and the way it's kind of blurred I think the main thing I remembered was The Hags of Yi they were sort of the first yo-kai and so we had to this is this is great stuff that we should have worked before we started the episode rather than on the record we're doing great so uh we're pretty much ready to get going in a second so the first thing I just want to very quickly mention before we do so and I had I had a big like glowing posting note that says don't forget to do this you idiots which was uh people who listen to this podcast on audio platforms may have noticed that some ads have been showing up in the last couple of months and that's because we actually got monetized on audio platforms weiter of people comment on us adverts it's understandable like beforehand there were no adverts we're going to try and keep these relatively unobtrusive going forwards guys we're going to try and integrate them a little bit into the flow of the show and we're going to not going to go the way of some you know some people who have like two three minutes of adverse at time something like that you might get two or three adverts at Max something like that and if you're wondering like why do you need to have adverts on it's because we're naked evil capitalists that's why I was just going to go because I want to pay the rent yes it does help us out in that regard and to pay for artwork hosting costs stuff like that online we'll try and keep them to you know every half an hour or something like that I think that's a good amount and uh in the past I've been putting up versions for patrons that are free and I don't want to discontinue doing that so if you are subscribed to the hisstocrat patreon you should still be getting the adree versions going forwards and we're considering doing something in terms of Channel memberships over on his Scrat channel so there might be an adree version for members if that comes to pass I don't know if I'm going to do that at the moment though so we'll wait and see on that one with all that said and given we're like nearly 10 minutes in cofy uh who is amatarasu so amasu is allegedly the ancestor of the Japanese emperors she's the third generation of Japanese Gods um essentially they have the primordial deities which existed before time itself then the first generation who created Japan and who birthed all the other gods and then amasu who came to rule the heavens and the Earth yeah as we all get into like the the exact definitions of generations in Japanese Gods is kind of difficult U I think in those primordial entities that you mentioned there there's like at one point there are seven generations inside that generation yeah it gets complicated we we'll not get bugged down in specifics there we will summarize it as best we can going forwards so uh amuru is probably best known in the kind of the western Consciousness for the name of a certain game for a start which that was that was my introduction to amaso back when I only knew about Greek and Roman and Egyptian and NS yeah like that game was of course Okami yep Okami which is a pun title for those who don't know all right please explain yeah so um orami is the Japanese word for Wolf however also the name of full name of amatarasu is amatarasu no orami the O meaning great or big and Cami being a spirit or God so oami wolf and oami great God so we got a nice up pun in there so yeah that's probably one of the main things the other thing will probably be the association with amasu with the Japanese Imperial family and some of the unfortunate overtones that took on during the the runup to World War II and stuff like that yeah we'll leave out the World War II stuff it's it's not really our our thing yeah we we T we try to avoid politics beyond the obvious uh in a lot of circumstances on this show so we're not going to go into that I imagine there are much better examinations than we are qualified to give as well on that one so with all that said then how we split this episode up to to cofty is really on first glance in my favor in that I hadn't didn't have to do as much work for it which is you're going to kind of talk kind of around amasu and her appearance in in myth and the The Wider associations she has with uh different societies and cultures that she's been reflected in my job today is just to summarize the actual myths which sounded easy sounded easy it leaves me kind of coming naked into the room here to some extent extent cuz I'm like I only have three sources for this episode that doesn't seem right but it turns out trying to reconcile the Kiki and the nion Shoki which are the two main bodies of literature in which amasu makes an appearance is a difficult job mostly the fault of the Nihon Shi I have to say the koii is not blameless in everything but it it's mostly blameless compared to the Nihon Shoki yeah the kuki at least tried to keep a single narrative whereas the Nihon Shoki tried to be more comprehensive and so had everything that they could fit into it in there it's uh it's an interesting document let's put it that way so that probably leads us into talking about our sourcers for today's episode so uh I don't have that many for today as I say just cited two of them yeah I've just cited two of them the first one I should probably say a bit more about the actual English language versions we've used because obviously these are Japanese text so for the koiki there are actually like three major translations into English out there so the first of these is the Basel Hall Chamberlain version from 1882 the uh 1969 nice Donald Philippi version and the 2014 Gustaf H version I've gone with the Donald Philippi version for this the reason being that it's a more upto-date translation than the chamberlan version which is over a 100 years old nearly 150 it's coming up on now and the other reason is the gustaff he version I'm told is good in terms of its actual translation of the sentence structure into English of Japanese he does the weird thing he translates all the Japanese god names into their literal meanings in English which I imagine that would capture more of the essence of what the names mean in the original text and what it would mean to someone who actually understands Japanese but in practice it makes it very hard to follow when if you're already familiar with some of the names of Japanese mythology and want to compare it to the Nihon Shi mhm for example instead of writing down amerasu he calls her Heaven shining throughout the whole text and then apparently he has a glossery which flips them all back again that you have to refer to separately and I'm like come on yeah this is a little awkward if you're completely unfamiliar might be helpful not in our case but um yeah so we've gone with Donald Philippi version uh luckily with the Nihon shy or unluckily there's only one major English translation which is the William George Aston version from 1896 so I've used that um I also very briefly refer to a master's thesis from the University of Oslo by uh Peter malum I believe his name um it's spelled slightly differently but I may have got that wrong titled old Japanese names and I'll bring up where that where that's relevant uh as for me I also obviously have the kuki and the Nihon Shoki the same translations as Charles and because I'm going into more of the historical side and more of the Japanese culture surrounding amasu I also have a couple of books that I be referring to the sources of Japanese tradition by William debar which is available on internet archive um and a history of the Japanese people from the earliest times to the end of the major era by Frank Brinkley and diaku Kikuchi which is available on Gutenberg and I'll be referring to a few papers as well the origin and growth of the worship of amatarasu by matuma teshi the origins of the grand Shrine of isay and the cult of the sun goddess amatarasu omikami and the cult of the sun goddess amatarasu omikami by akimio alone among women a comparative Mythic analysis of the development of amatarasu theology by mat Samara kazawa and I'll briefly be referring to a brief exploration of the development of the Japanese writing system by Brianna jelson okay so with that out of the way then we're going to start off cofy with a bit of a background to the worship of amatarasu over the course of Japanese history yes because I feel that before we tell the myth of amatarasu in full we should first discuss the origins of the written form of the myth and how they influenced the text that Charles will be referring to later so prior to the 5ifth century ad literacy was not very widespread at all in Japan the Japanese language itself had no writing system at the time and while the Chinese writing system that Japan would call ki had made its way to Japan it was generally only found on inscriptions on Chinese artifacts rather than used for Japanese around about the 5ifth century Scholars from Korea then began to teach the use of the Chinese script more widely among the upper classes which led to the eventual beginning of recordkeeping at first this was writing records in in Chinese before eventually learning to use Chinese characters for Japanese sounds which is quite complicated thing at the start yeah if anyone's familiar with uh the use of Cana form and how that was adapted from originally sumarian into Acadian for example it's a similar process yeah yeah and so prior to the introduction of the Japanese cabic scripts I guess that would be the right word so hiragana and Katakana which write specific syllables translating from these older Japanese texts that are entirely Ki is quite difficult and has it's probably what led to the issues with that last translation of the coy that you talked about so that's obviously a very very oversimplified description of how writing came to Japan but we'd be here all day if I went through the full paper on that so prior to the fifth century it's generally thought that because there was no there were no written religious texts that there's likely to be no single unified Shinto belief and with Shinto was instead a loose group of religions that varied between shrines between Clans and between regions rather than what we see today which still does have quite a lot of variety locally but still has this Central belief of amatarasu and connection to the Japanese emperor so the idea of shino's loose groups of religions that are mostly independent um is in keeping with aspects of Shinto that are similar to Shamanism found in Korea parts of China or Mongolia and as we discussed in our Yokai episode Shinto belief is largely animistic so it's about honoring Spirits known as Kam which are honored in different contexts at different shrines what a Kam is is as we discussed in yok as well is quite difficult to Define as we'll see when we tell the story of amasu in full amatarasu as a goddess does generally share aspects that we would see in European religions such as the Greek pantheon or nor paganism being viewed as a ruler over the heavens and the Earth and connected to an aspect of nature in this case the Sun so to give one of her full names that I mentioned earlier on amasu no orami it makes it clear that she is considered a C however C may be anything of significance which Shinto Believers May view as having a spirit mountains such as Mount Fuji or Mount taka may be considered Kami The Scholar sugara ninaz who we discussed in Yokai later on became woried as the Kami tenin after he died some yo-kai such as tangu from Mount TOA are also considered Kam at the same time and even inanimate objects that have been enshrined may be considered a came so when viewed this way the idea of a unified religion around the pantheon of gods and goddesses similar to the Olympians or the gods of Asgard the idea of that existing prior to the introduction of writing is quite unlikely the Kaki which translates as records of ancient matters represents the earliest surviving effort at recording both the belief in how Japan was created the histories of the Gods and the alleged history of the Japanese Imperial line at the risk of like we say never being allowed back in to Japan I say alleged because historically the first Emperors named and described in the Ki don't exist yeah that's the kind of sticking point with uh both kind of Japanese and to some extent Chinese traditional mythology as well as uh we're humans we only developed writing at a certain point so we have to make up a lot of what happened beforehand when we didn't have records exactly and when you are trying to establish a religion and your Empire then connecting the two is quite favorable to you as we'll see in a moment or even just like trying to establish a cohesive record of your religious practices that might be useful within your Society you know it's uh yeah it's understandable that things change and evolve during that process and that holes get filled in be it artificially exactly so yeah we uh we mean no offense to the Japanese Imperial family when we say this just we're trying to be as objective as possible here so the Kaki places the first Emperor's reign as the 7th Century BC a time that we now call the yayoi period in Japanese history historically we know that the Japanese Islands were still in their Bronze Age at the time and contemporary Chinese records agree with the archaeological record here that the islands were home to scattered tribes rather than a single unified State yeah I think the Chinese they describe the island as I think they call it w or something like that yes they do W which is a name that has in some context stuck so certain Japanese words now when you're describing something as specifically Japanese like Japanese food as opposed to Western food Japanese clothes as opposed to western clothes have wa as a prefix yeah so waku being Japanese food and wuku being Japanese clothes one other interesting note about the Chinese records that I'll mention now is that they do describe even in the ioi period an aspect of Shinto that is still seen today the ceremonial clapping called hakushu so in a modern Shinto prayer at a shrine one must bow twice clap twice and then bow once with hands together holding that position while one prays in the Chinese records the wagin as they called them performed the ceremonial clapping aspect of the prayer so some of the Shinto beliefs are seen even as early as a 7th Century even if much of the rest of what the k describes at the time wasn't accurate yeah oh one kind of useful distinction to make is that the coii is is kind of like it's accurate after a point so to speak in that the early stuff is made up but it does include historical actual references to Emperors and figures who lived and stuff like that yeah yeah and there are bits of the Kaki where kind of corroborated by Chinese records that I'll be into in a moment there's differences but there's enough there to say this figure probably inspired the character in The Kaki yeah there's like there's there's some slightly odd stuff in there as well like how in earlier Chinese Rec records there's like a polity on Japan called yamatai or something when obviously people if you know anything more about Japanese you'll know that the imper the official name like of the Japanese Imperial family is Yamato and that sort of like to some extent could make sense that it was the the same sort of early state in communication but we have no intervening records and also it's mentioned as being ruled by like a a female ruler as well in those records whose Name Escapes me at the moment I apologize he'll come up in a few paragraphs okay cool sorry I'm preempting everything here where was I yeah it's the it's the uh pck me teacher syndrome I know this how a gold star yeah so the Cod itself um based on Historical Notes From The Basel Hall Chamberlain translation which explained a bit of the supposed process of writing the book these notes state that it was commissioned by the emperor temu during his reign in the 7th Century ad he ordered a scholar who was renowned for his Perfect Memory he a out no aray to be instructed in and I quote the genuine tradition and language of former ages after AR memorized this history he would dictate it to scribes the work wasn't completed until after temo's death when his successor Empress gemo revived the project in the year 711 having a court Noble by the name of yasumaru transcribed the history as recounted by aray over the space of four and a half months prior to the writing of the kuki there were allegedly two other historical records compiled around the year 620 during the Regency of prince shotoku who was six Emperors prior to temu these were the teni the record of the Emperors and the kooki the National Record which covered Clans and Imperial subjects these books however were said to be lost in a fire in the year 645 the only record of their existance is in the Nihon Shoki and so whether the teni if it exists stood contained the story of amerasu and asserted that her descendants founded the Japanese Imperial line is unfortunately not known so the more relevant question for our purposes today is how much the Kaki represented the belief of the Japanese people or followers of Shinto at the time the answer to this does require us to challenge the official line on why the Kaki was written and as we've mentioned challenged the official history of the Japanese emperors it is quite possible that Emperor temu had a scholar at his court known of his Flawless memory and that the story of the process of compiling the kuki is true but the motivation is likely not the simple consolidation recording and preservation of knowledge that has been claimed Japan throughout its history has placed a lot of importance on Regional power and Clan leadership Wars have been fought both to prevent more centralized power and later to restore more power to individual Warlords so for a preliterate civilization known for these ideals to have maintained a Chinese style Imperial line for 1,400 years doesn't exactly fit really and from a religious standpoint the idea of the Emperor as a descendant of a ruling goddess Bears more of a resemblance to the Chinese idea of the Mandate of Heaven yeah the son of Heaven yeah yeah that may seem at odds with the original animistic nature of Shino So based on all this the likely motivation behind the composition of the kuki was truly power through creating written records linking their variant of Shinto to the creation of the Japanese Islands themselves and casting their ruler as the descendant of the sun goddess ruling by Divine Right temo's Clan the Amato could assert their dominion over Japan through means other than Brute Force this was not as simple as declaring their version of Shinto the one true religion and their leader the only descendant of the Gods however the Yamato were more clever than that instead the kakit gives roles to gods associated with other clans and their beliefs so rather than stamping out other religions the yam Incorporated them into the Kaki and Incorporated the mythical ancestors of the other clans into their history as descendants of lesser gods by placing the am Emperor at the top of the hierarchy while conceding that the other Clan rulers had a similar divine right to rule their lands it's possible that that is the beginning of the feudal system that we know from later Japanese history the most notable example of a god of another clan being brought into the Yamato version of Shinto is susano amaterasu's brother well I'll not go into the story here as that is of course for Charles to tell in full later susano was traditionally associated with the itso clan whose territory covered what is now shiman prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast in Western honu this is the region where the most famous portion of susano's story takes place when he descends from the heavens and includes him marrying and fathering children with the princess of itso thus founding the line of itso Clan rulers however as we'll see later and we mentioned as we say in Dragons and in Yokai many episodes of the story feature susano as an antagonist to amatarasu challenging her for superiority and destroying the things she creates this may in fact mirror the particularly strong antagonism that the itso clan held for the am Clan with the itmo clan being the strongest challenges to the am's assertion of authority what I do find interesting is that while many people may incorporate the gods of a defeated enemy into their religion as a devil figure here the Rival Clan's God was still granted a position in the pantheon even if his story did include antagonism and Exile historically that does tend to be a better way of assimilating peoples though yeah like when the um for example when the acadians uh throughout the actually quite brief time that they uh conquered Suma and large portions of Mesopotamia they for example didn't say hey our gods and goddesses are the only you can only refers to under our name you know they continued the previous practice which was oh yeah they're the same Gods you just worship them under a different name and we're not going to make you change any of that you know that sort of thing we saw something similar going on with the Egyptian panan as well so yeah that doesn't surprise me that that is the cas it's not like in the um you know like the what's it called like the rig Vaders and stuff like that where the previous uh Dennis of L and that are presented as like Monsters and stuff like that you know exactly yeah and that's it that might be me horribly misrepresenting the rig Vader by the way it's very hard to get hold of the rig Vader to read it yeah much as we want to cover that sort of Mythology it's a difficult one so the importance of ismo um in Shinto predates the kuki iso TAA meaning itso Grand Shrine and also named itso oyashiro is thought to be the oldest Shinto Shrine in Japan both the kojiki and the nanoki mention it confirm confirming it was well established by that point there's no exact date of its founding however as the buildings are rebuilt every 60 to 70 years this is both for religious reasons to maintain the power of the enshrined C and for cultural re for cultural reasons to maintain the Architectural Traditions in its construction according to records dating back to the 10th Century the shrine was the tallest building in Japan in that era and stood some 48 meters tall the shrine itself self is dedicated to okushi a deity said to be either the son or descendant of susano he's considered a god of Happiness of protection and maintaining good relationships so much more human concern than many prominent Shino gods of the era yeah he will be coming up very prominently in uh my summary of the myths good good to know that is in there yes it's pretty integral yeah so as Charles will be explaining in detail later he was said to have ruled Earth prior to amatarasu sending her grandson and relinquishing the rule to amaterasu's descendants and residing in a separate Unseen World called kakaro the kuki claims that amatarasu said she would honor him by granting him a residence in the same architectural style as her own from which he would cast a spell of happiness and prosperity over the people of the land and I don't think this is to be read as saying that okui's grand Shrine will be based on amasus Grand Shrine eay jingu because both historically isot TAA is thought to predate eay jingu and The Narrative of the Nihon Shoki also says that isota was founded first so my interpretation of that is that isota was intended to be designed after amaterasu's residence in the heavens which is quite fitting for the first sh quite fitting for the first Shinto Shrine and also a very generous gift to a god cast as being a Lesser God to amatarasu and of course speaking of gift cofty do you know what time it is capitalism time capitalism time folks uh today's podcast is sponsored by the undisclosed fast food chicken we ate before we came on here because we don't want to get sued for associating them with our product uh here's some ads and we're back so cofty I vaguely remember you speaking Yeah I think it was I don't know that was a long break so the story of this peaceful transfer of power from okon nushi to amasu and her descendants does support the idea of the kojiki as an effort to secure yam Supremacy through control of the historical narrative while the story may be more peaceful than the reality it can easily be read as a mythical parallel to the surrender of isimo to Yamato rule it's also possible that it does represent certain natural developments in Shinto over time prior to the official Shinto mythology codified in the kuki that's tongue twister I did not realize that when I wrote it so William debarry in his book sources of Japanese tradition briefly discusses the idea of Shinto as a large number of individual cults which included ancestor Cults fertility Cults hero Cults nature Cults and other animistic and shamanistic religions rather than becoming a single religion with the writing of the Ki crossover between different Cults led to prominence of specific Gods representing groups of Cults together including some groups who all revered the sun goddess and so the idea of there being multiple competing versions of Shinto whose deities must all fit into The Narrative of the koaki is a possible explanation behind this story that Mo Shrine was constructed first and that amatarasu honored okanui by gifting him the shrine when he relinquished the Earth to her May imply that for some time the more prominent form of Shinto was the form practiced by the itso clan and okanui was the ruler of the Gods much of what I have covered so far relies on interpreting the kji the Nihon Shoki and later writings on Shinto and Japanese history but we do have one other source of Japanese belief prior to the Ki the records of Chinese interaction with early Japanese so China was aware of Japan as early as the 1 Century BC as we said before referring to the land as W and its people as the wagin these people were said by the Chinese to be divided into over a 100 tribal communities across the Japanese archipelago and this as I said before according to the kuki would be the time of the emperor suin the 11th Emperor right ings on the Japanese people at this time were mainly confined to appendices in each Chinese dynastic history Chronicle where the historians would give details on the Barbarian Nations surrounding China and their dealings with Chinese I was wondering if the word barbarian was about to show up knowing what the Chinese records are like during that period yeah I hope the inverted commas were clearing my voice yeah these Chronicles give an indication as to the earli attempts to unify Japan so before I go into them I'll say the translations I have refer to the rulers of Japan as Kings or Queens rather than Emperors or empresses whether this is the Chinese writers or whether it's debare attempting to convey the Japanese rulers perceived inferiority to the Chinese rulers rather than their chosen titles I'm not sure but that's that's what I assume what time period are we talking about again Century wise uh so the first one is around the third Century ad third Century ad so that's the Han period uh yeah so there is Han that might actually be might be past the Han period actually history of the kingdom of wayi Wei okay I think this is actually slightly after the hand Dynasty but then the hand Dynasty had a period of like the hand Dynasty did have a tradition at one point having like sub subsidy Kings within the Empire um I know that started out very early on in the hand dasty and I think was later suppressed yeah but it yeah it wouldn't surprise me if it as a result it was I think trying to know a tributary ruler rather than acknowledging any title the Japanese actually held for themselves yeah that's it and there are part of these records is basically discussing the responsibilities of the Emperor or Empress of Japan as a ruler and as kind of a vassel to China so the first Chronicle that discusses the Japanese I say the history of the kingdom of wayi please forgive my Chinese pronunciations they're not going to get better oh just for uh completeness sakes by the way it was um it was during the Three Kingdoms period this would have been going down so probably cway or some something like that would be the ones compiling that record because the fre king of spirit there was three separate uh competing dynasties uh there was Shuan dongwu and um cwe yeah I mean to read more about the Three Kingdoms yeah i' I've had a copy of a book on them forever but so this Chronicle um does say that Japan is ruled by a single Monarch around about the end of the 3r century ad okay so to quote the translated text given by debar the country forly had a man as a ruler for some 70 or 80 years after that there were disturbances and warfare thereupon the people agreed upon a woman for their ruler her name was pimiko she occupied herself with magic and sorcery bewitching the people though mature in age she remained unmarried she had a younger brother who assisted her in ruling the country as I said this then goes on to refer to envoys sent by the queen of w to the Chinese Court in the year 238 and the edict that these envoys were given from the emperor way formerly recognizing pimo as the queen of w and a friend of Wei and describing the expectations of loyalty and expectations upon her as the Queen by being granted the title of friend of way okay and so so it was it was sway then in that case it was sway that was compiling This Record yeah and so this essentially treats her as a vassel of the Chinese Imperial Court I'm just going to correct the early line I said it's not it's not cway it's sway um so you had like um yeah had the three kings that were Dong Wu swe and Shuan okay so interestingly the reain of Queen pimiko recorded by the Chinese does somewhat fit with the chronology of the koaki where Empress jingu ruled as Regent following the death of her husband Emperor Chui from the year 2011 to 269 while the 80 years of warfare described by the Chinese are not part of the kuki and the kuki says that she was married Emperor chuai is killed in a rebellion and Empress jingu does go to war before ascending the throne first she put down the rebellion and then Guided by visions of amatarasu she went on to conquer the Three Kingdoms of Korea jingu is however succeeded by her son in the kuki while the co to the Chinese pimiko is succeeded by her daughter so well these are some quite major differences if the Chinese account has been believed then there is at least one historical ruler who one of the Imperial line in the kuki was at least partly based on yeah I mean obviously that that account the Japanese side of the accounts from the koiki would kind of give her R over 60 years or something like that that's just you know typical inflation that you get with some of these like more mythical rulers like that's it's the same in the samian king list yeah where you get like Gilgamesh being like having 120 year reign and stuff like that I apologize I keep using Mesopotamia as the example but it's like my only one that I know you've done a lot on it so and yeah and jimu allegedly reigned for 129 years yeah got a oneup Gilgamesh yeah I might even have got that wrong on gilgames but well G going to one up jimu now yeah it's going to have to be yeah the fight of the ages yeah I don't like the both of their main trait is that they never lose so yeah actually know jimu does lose a couple of times yeah but he I'm picking I'm back in gilgames money's on gilgames jimu is like Orcs he he he Retreats so he can win the next day yeah exactly it's the first time Japanese been compared to Orcs that's a new one let's not explore that in detail let's keep going we're going to be serious so serious face the ne the next Chronicle that brings in the Japanese um is the chronicle of the Lan Dynasty written around 445 ad which again tells ofwa originally being divided into over a 100 countries but specifies that each of these was ruled over by a king whose power is hereditary it names one of those countries as new stating that they are located in the southern extremity of Japan and they were the first to send an Envoy to China in 57 ad this tribe that made first contact with the Chinese originating in southern kushu does also fit with where the yam supposedly originated before jimu made his kingdom in Nara as he did originate in southern kushu the chronicle then also reiterates the story of pimiko and states that now the great king of w resides in the region of yamadai or yamatai though gives no indication of where that is just for clarification anyone the the kind of later hand that you referred to there is from a period of Chinese history known as the 16 kingdoms which is where the the after the collapse of the Jin Dynasty kind of became a period of uh disunity in Chinese history thank you yeah I just had the names of The Chronicles from dear's work so didn't have as much context basically goes Three Kingdoms uh sway reun sort of reunify and gets taken over by a different ruling class and becomes gin Dynasty gin Dynasty saw 12 collapses and there's a bunch of Kingdoms as well as them at the same time thank you yeah debar didn't really give any of that context because he was just focusing on the timeline of Japan so he just gave the name of the chronicle and the years yeah so I don't know how much help it is just I just always was nice to try say what's going on in China whilst these things are being recorded that's it I appreciate the context so so while this Chronicle is referring to a great king of War this is still probably not a single ruler of unified Japan the yamad state which would later change its name to Yamato um isn't thought to have covered North Japan and additionally it is disputed whether the amadi was even the sole Center of local power or whether the kings that the Chinese referred to were in fact independent with yamad simply the most prominent member of an alliance of States yeah so something similar to what happened in the Cho dynasty in China where they like this 400 period year period where you effectively had like a dozen Kings but there was actually one king except he had a tiny little parcel of land and everyone was like yeah he's the king but we don't listen to him yeah could have been that could have been more unified yeah yeah exactly this version is known as the Yadi honu theory if you want to read more about it um because if we if we do go into any more detail again we'll be here all day it's there is a whole debate with proponents of the honu theory and proponents of the kushu theory where the yadii were just a completely separate nation from the rest of Japan based in kushu and didn't have the power that the Chinese attributed to them and that is a whole can of worms 12 up yeah getting us away from our amerasu topic so yeah exactly we're already on a tangent as it is we don't want to tangent the tangent yeah this tangent at least comes round to something relevant don't tangent about Tangen thing don't worry this tangent comes back around it's more coine oh God I apologize to [Laughter] mathematicians so essentially essentially even when contemporary written histories do show parallels with the Kaki we can't rarely give Credence to the claims in the kuk of any form of Imperial line however and this is where the tangent about Sino Japanese relations does relate back to amatarasu the Chinese records do give hints as to the final piece in the evolution of Shinto belief from individual cults to Loosely connected beliefs with shared gods to the single religion with an hierarchy of gods the last of the Chinese records prior to the writing of the Koji is where we see reference to the Japanese emperor being described as descended from the gods in the history of theu Dynasty written around the year 630 this refers to a king of w named am tarishi hoko at some point in the Chinese Kang era sorry if the pronunciation between 581 and 600 King tarih hoko sent an Envoy to the Chinese court and the emperor ordered his officials to make inquiries as to the customs of the w Court the W Envoy reported to the Chinese emperor that the king of w deems heaven to be his elder brother and the son his younger before the the break of dawn he attends the court and sitting cross-legged listens to appeals just as soon as the sun rises he ceases these duties saying that he hands them over to his brother the Chinese emperor told the envoy to convey the message that such beliefs were senseless and that the king of w must change his ways so later in this Chronicle we find that the king of w did indeed change his ways but not in the way that the Emperor of China liked in 600 7 Emperor Yang received a letter from King taroko which opened the child of Heaven in the land where the sun rises addresses this letter to the child of Heaven in the land where the sun sets we hope you are in good health Emperor Yang was a bit miffed to say the least he was greatly angered and he told his foreign minister that this letter from The Barbarians was discourteous and if he is addressed in such a rude manner again it should not be brought to his attention yeah that's if you understand like the the way that Chinese Emperor's addressed is like the son of all under Heaven it's like yeah we're the son of all under Heaven over here yeah that's it all under Heaven does not really leave room for another one you know we we know you're the son of heaven but we're actually a lot closer to the sun over here so that they think that is part of what offended offended them not only not only the the child of heaven but also the proximity to the sun yeah actually we're doing a little better over here yeah that's it there's there's a lot in that one sentence to ca international incident and so we have with all of that we have evidence of the yato Court being in contact with the Chinese court for some four centuries and we know that during this time the Amato learned to write in Chinese before adapting Chinese characters to wri in Japanese as I say this began in the late 4th Century with Korean Scholars introducing Chinese literature particularly Confucian and Buddhist texts so this influx of Chinese philosophy firsthand knowledge of the Chinese Imperial Court and the ability to write their own histories philosophies and religious beliefs was very likely a catalyst for the shift among the Yamato from the more shamanistic form of religion described in the early Chinese histories to asserting that the Y Emperor was the Child Of Heaven by this point the combination of the structure found in Chinese philosophy influencing the most powerful clan in what may be an alliance of autonomous Clans each with their own religious beliefs allowed the structure of Shinto belief that we see going forward to come into being because the Amor Emperors Consolidated power while letting the Clans retain a level of autonomy a religion that can place amatarasu at the top as queen of the gods while still treating the C of a mountain of a forest or of inanimate objects as equally Divine can exist and in some ways can mirror the power structures of early Japan and so with that we have a brief overview of the development of Shinto prior to the writing of the kuki and to thean shaki and so once Charles has inserted a laugh track after the word brief I'm going to hand over to Charles who's going to tell the story I am atasu as written in the kki all right thank you grd so that's good that gives a lot more context to the actual writing of the documents and the possible influences uh than I I had gone into so that that's good that gives a good good starting point so to to go into the actual myths then that amasu appears in so as I said before we're working from both the Nihon Shoki and the kojiki I've kind of had to Brute Force these guys together because they don't they don't match very well um the Shi makes a lot more consideration for things like alternative accounts and different Regional Traditions so that's some of the reason for that all I've done is I've tried to include the most interesting of those accounts there's often points where there are so many versions of the accounts and they're all so similar it's like it's just going to draw the the time out a bit too much for that so I've done my best to simplify things down there's plenty more in there if you want to actually go and try and read the H Shoki for yourself though so in their opening passages these two two Works already differ between each other the nion shy begins with a description of the primordial World which it describes as being a chaotic Mass like an egg we're then told that over time the purer and clearer part was drawn out into heaven while as the quote heavier and grosser part settled down and became the Earth then according to both Works fre deities came into existence in takam no par or the plane of high heaven which the koiki names as and this is the where I start to have difficulty part of this script good luck a NOA no Kami mhm uh second is Takami mubi no Kami third is Kami mu norami yeah so those are the three primordial entities that came into existence they came into existence as individual deities but they are described as not being visible during this time the Earth itself was still unformed even if it had been drawn out a bit in Theon Shoki and the COI key describes it as resembling floating oil and drift like a jellyfish now in the version of the tale that both we both Works generally agree on and give us their main narrative Between Heaven and Earth they sprouted something that looked like Reed choots from which came into being two more deities take a deep breath UMAS asiabi P Noami and am no too tati Noami together these five figures form a group known as the separate Heavenly di deities after this they then came into existence seven generations of divinities each consisting of a male and a female pair I've not gone into all of them because it's just a big list basically and they don't play any further role in the myth that I'm aware of this ultimately culminates in the deities of isagi Noami and his spouse isanami Noami now in the nion shoky there is also a whole sequence of variant Tales Each of which stress that some form of void or cloud or even a read inside a void existed between the Heaven and Earth and it is from these that the sequence of Gods sprung forth according to the Kiki the separate Heavenly deities then command isagi and isanami to quote complete and solidify this drifting land they give them the am no nooku the Heavenly jeweled spear in the main account of the Shoki the two simply decided to complete this task on their own initiative though the version that I've just outlined from the koiki is mentioned there as one of the variant accounts they then stand on something referred to as the Heavenly Floating Bridge which according to Philippi is interpreted as variably a boat a raft a high ladder or even a rainbow between the Heaven and the Earth and together they use the spear to churn the brine of the land when they've completed this they lift up the spear with the brine dripping from it and the droplets pile upon the surface and form an island named onog Goro descending to this island they ere a Heavenly pillar that that marks the center of the land along with the pow them to live in so around this time the two ask each other about their bodies with isagi noting that one part of his body has formed in excess well done on Japanese mythology for keeping things PG and isanami notes that one part of hers has formed insufficiently the two then decide to have what was in the text I read described as intimate relations they hug in a special way yeah which results in is an army giving birth to the land before this they walk in opposite directions in a circle around the pillar after which isanami says Anan Nashi how good a lad and then isagi says Anan Nashi how good a maiden however isagi considers it improper for isanami to have spoken first as the woman and according to the koiki this causes their initial children to be considered failures these included something described as the leech child which is an interesting name I actually kind of want to know more but nothing more is said and they instead just place this creature in a boat made of reeds and allow it to float off into the primordial Earth they also make an island named apaa and uh they take great pains in the text note that neither of these beings are considered to be their proper children uh they then consult with the Heavenly deities who conduct a grand divination or panii according to Philippi the pamani was a type of ancient Japanese ation where the shoulder blade of a deer was heated using bark from a papaka tree after which the cracks in the bone would be observed and interpreted now I couldn't find what actual tree that this is referring to but according to that 2014 Master's feis that I mentioned one theory is that it may be referring to what's called either the bird cherry or the hackberry tree uh the Heavenly deities then point out the mistake of isanami speaking first and the two repeat the ritual successfully in the main account of the Nihon Shoki none of this happens there's no intervention by the Heavenly deities they simply repeat the proper ritual after izanagi's initial displeasure and isanami instead first gives birth to the island of APPA which neither of them take any pleasure in again however the version found in kojiki is included as a variant Tradition now in both versions is an army then gives birth to eight islands that are respectively referred to as the Oppo yasima goni or the great land of yasima which according to Philippi is a poetic name for Japan uh and then after this they also give birth to another six the reason for this distinction is apparently because the number eight is considered I think lucky or sacred to the Japanese I don't know if that's kind of a simplistic reading of that tradition I'm I'm not sure about that tradition myself to be honest with you I've not have not had a chance to look into it yeah fair enough and then the other explanation he also gives is that it's kind of a kind of a number that's just used to mean like a myriad in the same way that 80 or 800 is in some of these texts as well now according to the COI Kei with the land now brought forth is an army then gives birth to 35 different Kami in several distinct groups as with the seven generations of gods we described earlier these deities are not really described in any detail so I will spare you a long long listing of all their names it is however mentioned they include the SE it the gods of the Sea and the river Straits of the wind the trees the mountains and the plains in the nion Shoki there is also another variant tale where isanami is instead described as giving birth to the natural features of the land which are in this case not described as Kami isanami then gives birth to the fire god uh Pino yagi Paya warno Cami who burns her genitals and makes her sick from her vomit urine and feces come another series of gods after which she dies and descends to the land of Yi which we will talk about more in a minute in response to this isagi crawls weeping around his dead wife's feet crying out alas I have given my beloved spouse an exchange for a mere child his tears cause another deity to spring into life the appropriately named nakis sappa Minami or weeping Marsh woman goddess which col Philippi might actually be a reference to the practice of using female lamenters at funerals I have not enough knowledge of Japanese Society to say whether that's correct at not yeah no been to a Japanese funeral don't know according to the kojiki isagi then buries isanami on Mount peba whereas according to the nion Shi he buried her in the village of arima on the island of key or Kai key key fair enough he then unshaved his 10 hands long sword which is is one of the repetitive phrases that you get throughout the kojiki and then Han Shoki the 10 hands long sword and uses it to cut off the head of the fire god uh from whose blood sprang three gods associated with rock two associated with fire and two associated with water so in Greek mythology Kronos will be glad to know that someone else in mythology is known for murdering their children yeah well I think he actually failed he tried to consume them so in some ways that makes e Nagi worse yeah one Theory presented by Philippi is that this whole process is in reference to the tempering of a sword which must be heated by fire uh shaped on a rock uh the rock gods that he created and then quenched in water so yeah as I say he brought forth gods associated with fire rock and water according to the kojiki after this isagi deeply wishes to see his wife again and follows her to the land of yomi so we did discuss this chain of events in the yo-kai episode in some detail briefly however uh here she comes out of the the door of her Hall to greet him and isagi begs her to come back with him as the lands they were making have not been completed isanami is glad to see him and tells him to wait while she goes to the gods of yomi to discuss her desire to return this in itself is a little bit confusing as these Gods AR identified with any of the Gods sired by isanami or isagi and the word used here may be either singular or plural so it's a little uncertain however isanami discussions G on for so long that isagi grows restless and you know I'm also growing Restless for propy what a bad transition I'm am restless to plug this nondescript Anonymous soda drink that I've been drinking to keep up the uh the energy for this not barari sweat unfortunately but uh we'll do our best to get that parari sweat sponsorship in the year 207 five here's some ads and we are back brackets unfortunately end bracket yeah so I hope you all enjoyed that delicious ad break PE break for me they needed to know that yeah definitely I mean we have a policy of transparency and openness and despite how much our listeners object to it quite frankly uh okay so back to isanami and isagi is anagi grows restless waiting for isanami to returns from the gods of yomi he breaks off the end teeth of his comb and goes into the Hall there he sees is an Army's corpse which is full of maggots the text goes to Great lines to name all the maggots and give their aspects but I feel like that is a uh yeah a writer going overboard quite frankly and he is so terrified by this Vision that he turns and flees isan armi cries that he has shamed her by doing this and she dispatches The Hags of yomi to pursue him so I think we discussed that in the yo-kai episode what yoai did we think they might be they we thought they might be precursors to the Ani yeah that was it because they were ogre like yeah they pursue isagi however he successfully evades them by throwing down his hair band and comb which turn into grapes and bamboo shoots respectively and The Hags stop to eat them after this isanami sends eight Thunder deities and the Warriors of yomi after him I think they're literally just described in one line we have no idea anything more about the Warriors of yomi isagi fleas making it to the pass that marks the entrance to yomi here he finds free peaches which he uses to drive his pursuers away now according to um Donald Philippi this may be a reference to a Chinese tradition of using peaches to dispel demons or evil spirits uh which again may be another sign of Chinese influence on Japanese culture during this period finally isanami comes after isagi herself her husband sees her coming and pulls a huge Boulder in front of the pass which separates the two forever in Anger at this is anami threatens that she will kill a thousand people of the lands they have created each day to which isan aru reports that he will build 1500 part uh parition or childbirth Huts each day I was struggling on the word parition now this is the explanation given in Japanese mythology why people are born and why they die so the version of this tale found in the Nihon Shoki is broadly the same but it varies in a few key details for a start in this version isan armi is not subject to any gods of yomi uh she just simply dwells in the NW when isagi comes to see her they simply Converse together and isanami explains that she has already eaten of the half of yomi and asks isagi not to look on her as she sleeps isagi again grows bored however and does so which results in then the familiar sequence of events in this version he also evades The Hags through slightly different methods so in addition to throwing down his hair band and comend he also chooses to urinate against a tree which turns into a raging river that The Hags then struggle to pass whilst the Thunder deities and the Warriors of yomi go unmentioned in this version of the tale there is yet another variant in which isam's body is not Infested by maggots which is instead overtaken by by eight Thunder deities and finally there is also a version where the problem is not that isagi is horrified uh by his wife being four maggots but because she gets angry because he spies on her while she is naked so after his journey through the unclean land isagi decides to purify his body he goes to the plane of apaki par then to the river mouth of a place called tati Banner here he throws down his clothing which causes another 12 deities to be born from the discarded garments again they don't do anything in the wider narrative so I've not really gone into them and dives into the middle of the river so the act of washing the pollution off his body causes two more deities to be born followed by three more to balance out the evil of the pollution as he washes his body throughout the different parts of the river six more deities spring into existence resulting in 11 total then in the last act he washes his face it's not exactly in this order in the text but it works better narratively whilst he es his nose that came into existence the storm God Taki paa suzano wo Mikoto T ah take paa suzano wo Mikoto usually better known as suzano and as he wipes his right eye there cames into existence the uh Moon God suku Yumi no Mikoto finally he wipes his left eye and in doing so he gives birth to the sun goddess amaraso oppi Kami now again in Theon Shoki there is a variant version of the tale that has these births all occur before that of the fire god and they are explicitly said to have been the children of both is an armi and is anagi rather than just isagi by himself which is a point that will come up later when I discuss this all right yeah on the birth of these last three Gods then is anagi is Overjoyed stating that I have born child after child and finally in the last bearing I've obtained fre Noble children he then takes off his bead necklace and gives it to amerasu declaring that she will now rule over takama noara which if you remember is the plane of high heaven that we mentioned at the beginning according to the koiki he then entrusts suku yomi with the rule of the ocean and grants rulership over the night to susano now according to Donald furpie there also exist variants on the Nihon Shi where susano is instead given rulership over the Earth or the world I haven't really looked further into that and it doesn't really come up until much later whilst amatarasu and suku yomi obey their father's command and take up their a lotted duties suzano refuses instead he spends all his time weeping and Howling causing the mountains to wer and all the sources of water to dry up he continues to do this until his beard is 10 hands long and the land is filled with malavan entities and calamities isagi then demands susano explain his behavior and susano replies that he actually wishes to go to what he describes as the land of his mother which is noata Suk Kuni or I think is actually just yomi or the Japanese neverworld I'm not sure which one it's supposed to be referring to enraged by susano's chering of his duties isagi expels him from the heavens in the Nihon Shi there is kind of an abbreviated version of these events that occurs before isanami death and it is they together who expel him purely on the grounds of his Wicked and raful nature Suzanna is like a weird deity in that regard where he's not quite it's not case of you know he's just this evil creature I think it's more a case that the certain aspects that are just part of his nature that are not necessarily seen as evil he's just what he's like that's it and his antagonism does sort of as as we'll see is involved in a lot of creation as well with amasu yeah and sometimes it's a case of him doing things that then get misconstrued as well cuz he thinks it's innocent they're all like no we know what you like suzano yeah he's just misunderstood yeah he's just missing he's always nice to me so according to uh Theon Shoki again the he is however allowed to return briefly to the heavens after which he request requests to be able to see his sister amatarasu one last time now there's also uh a tale where amatarasu and suku yomi get into a disagreement over a servant that amatarasu sends to wait on her brother uh who sukumi ends up killing the result result is that the two have to be separated by the day and night hence their roles as the sun and the moon respectively this interaction also results in the birth of the ox the horse Millet rice silk worms Wheats and beans from the servant's body which despite the death of the servant causes amasu to rejoice as now in the future mankind will have something to eat mindful of this she plants the crops in her fields and they grow into long drooping ears that are highly Pleasant to look at ears is in like ears of wheat yeah not ears yes that would not be pleasant Jito territory there yeah I have a Jito thing on here it's the one about spirals yeah I've got usaki as well yeah um I made it about a further way through and I realized where it was going I was like oh no I'm putting this book back down I stuck it out yeah uh where was I so now having brought forth the land and its occupants isagi judged his Divine mission to be complete the koiki briefly mentions that isagi was then secluded in a shrine on the island of aumi uh the Nihon Shoki Echoes this but it also has a variant tradition that says that isagi instead ascended to ascended to the heavens where he reported the completion of his mission to bring forth the land to the separate Heavenly deities and that he then went on to reside in a place known as the younger Palace of the sun I think that is the variant which has its Mota as the first shrine just everything's in not not there is necessarily a need for internal consistency in mythology but it makes sense I think that's the one where it has that yeah in the aftermath of izanagi's departure suzano goes to take his leave of his sister he attempts to return to the Heavens to do so which causes the mountains and rivers to Roar and all the lands to shake amatarasu is startled by this thinking that her brother has come to usurp her lands as a precaution she undo her hair and wraps sit up in a masculine hairstyle ties up her skirts in trousers takes up a bow equips two massive Quivers and an armguard then wraps magatama beads around her body so magatama beads they're kind of like if you're familiar with the yin and yang symbol aren't they like the individual yin and yang are two of those together I think so I would need check but yeah that's they're a type of beads and they're often referred to as like a uh beads that they're kind of like almost types of jewels really like polish jewels that are often pierced from what I'm understand of Japanese uh traditions in that regard yeah just pulled up a picture to check and yeah all right so when you're asking questions and I'm just going blank because I'm terrible when you put me on the spot it's fine sorry no no yeah I think there's some traditions around here like I don't know if this said in the text I do remember reading somewhere there some traditions that when amarasi does this she actually becomes male again that's that's something that I have have to talk about this R yeah it's important in one analysis of it yeah having equipped herself so amasu then emulates her brother's Temper by stamping her feet into the ground and kicking the Earth around her when susano arrives she Roars at him in a fury asking him why he has come suzano replies that he has no ill intentions merely wishing to say goodbye to his sibling but amasu is still suspicious is a bit bit much he hasn't actually done anything yet as far as I'm aware so she asks him how she will know that his intentions are pure and he responds that to prove it they should swear OES and bear children they each stand on the opposite side of a river where they swear their OES amatarasu requests susano's 10 hands long sword which he throws to her and she breaks it into three pieces and rinses them in the river she then chews up each of the three pieces and spits them out which is pretty hardcore we got to say like damn eating sords yeah and from the Mist around them there came into existence three female deities suzano then requests the Bunches of beads from amatarasu that isagi gifted her which he likewise washes in the river and then chews up and spits out this in turn causes five male deities to come into existence so this part is where the taale again diverges between the two texts in the kojiki amasu then notes that the last five male children are actually hers as they came from her possessions whilst the three female children are susanos susano then declares Victory playing that quote it was because my intentions were pure and bright that in the children I begot I obtained graceful maidens by this it is obvious that I have won in the nonon Shoki however there is another version where it is stipulated that suzano must bring forth male deities to prove his truthfulness and this turn of events proves to amasu that he is not lying there's also a version where it is suzano who requests amaterasu's sword and she in turn requests a set of magatama jewels that he has brought with him there's like a a Side Story as to where he got that I've not gone into there are other versions that again swap around who eats the sword but as things are getting a bit complex I thought I'd leave things as they are now in all versions however these events cause suzano to then fly into a rage and he Rampages throughout the heavens he breaks down the ridges between amaterasu's rice patties covers up her ditches lets loose her horses and defecates all about the special hle in which the Harvest was to be celebrated I think in some it's referred to as like a festival of first fruits or something like that amatarasu refuses to condemn him for these actions assuming that he is drunk and also that he thought her use of the lands as ditches and patties to be wasteful so despite this susano's Behavior grows even more disruptive while samasu is busy weaving Divine garments in the sacred weaving Hall he breaks in through the roof then throws inside a pony that he has skinned alive which again pretty pretty metal sadistic but pretty metal I think this is gonna be an album title Pony that I SK live this wow they got another great sentence coming up here this so terrifies one of amaterasu's attendant priestesses that she quote struck her genitals against the shuttle and died we're just writing a black metal album yeah imagine having that on your death certificate like the cor the coroner realizing in real time what happened like way on your gravestone yeah feel sorry for someone end up in that um in a variant version found in the nion Shoki it is in fact amatarasu who does this and she is instead injured in both versions susano's actions say either frighten injure or make her indignant and she goes and opens a place referred to as the Heavenly Rock cave door then shuts herself inside understandably with the sun goddess now absent from the plane of high heaven all was dark and Japan which is usually referred to of the land of the Reed Plains in these texts was plunged into constant darkness and no one had any idea if it was night or day in this Darkness the other deities cried out and Calamity Rose throughout the land a great assembly of either 800 or 80 Gods as I mentioned before a myriad effectively uh then gathers to try and end the Eternal Darkness together these deities perform many acts such as gathering together all the of the land and forcing them to Crow forging a great Heavenly mirror and Myriad strings of magatama beads and Performing another Heavenly divination using the shoulder bone of a male deer and papaka wood as an offering they fix the mirror and the beads to the upper branches of a tree that they have uprooted and drape its lower branches with blue and white cloth uh according to the kojiki the god puto Tama no Mikoto then held up all the items the gods had gathered whilst the god am noo Yan no Mikoto in toned a solemn liturgy I think I'm doing okay on yeah like I've not simplified them any way they're just the actual like How It Was Written in the in the text as well yeah few times you've extended the not a bit way you shouldn't but that's yeah I think I'm over I think I'm over compensating because I I basically don't know how long vows work that's that's it it's one I'm not going to pull you up on unless it's like really really important like susano as we' mentioned in previous episodes coffy sort of speaks Japanese so the Japanese don't think I Japanese I've tried it doesn't is it is is that a real thing or is it like I don't think you're Yorkshire cuz you're from South Yorkshire and I'm from West Yorkshire no no it is just that my Japanese isn't good enough for a proper conversation it tends to be broken Japanese and their broken English sort thing fair enough so uh okay the God amot this is going to be interesting the god amadara wo Kami then concealed himself by the cave door ready to grab amatarasu if given the opportunity whilst the goddess Amino uzum nor Mikoto bound up her sleeves and hair with a Heavenly Vine bound together bundles of Sasa leaves in her hands then overturned a bucket before the Heavenly Rock cave door Amin nozumi then stamps her foot on the ground at which point she becomes divinely possessed she tears off her clothing exposing her breasts and genitalia and this causes all the assembled Gods to laugh so hard that the heaven Shake in the Nikon Shoki however the events are a lot simpler and amino Zumi instead dresses herself in a headdress and braces Kindles fires then performs a mimic dance and gives a divinely inspired utterance am no ah am no uh I think I got it wrong there as well no o instead dresses herself in a headdress and braces Kindles fires then performs a mimic dance and gives a divinely inspired utterance according to Aston um this is sometimes given as the source of the modern Shinto Dan cere ceremony of the kagura yep I I I didn't know if that was true or not cuz as was writing in the 19th century yeah I have some notes on that as well just as a the rituals and stuff God it's amazing how we don't talk at all between writing these and somehow it all syns up at the end it's almost like we use the same sources oh no I did have a different source for that one uh hearing this amasu opens the cave door a crack and says because I have shut myself in I thought that the plane of high heaven would be dark and that the central land of the Reed Plaines would be completely dark but why is it that am no uzume sings and dances and all the 800 Myriad deities laugh so in the COI she explains that it is because there is a de Superior to amatarasu to fool the goddess uh puto Tama nomoto brings forth the mirror and shows it to amatarasu thinking that this is very strange and seeing the reflection amatarasu gradually comes out of the cave and approaches the mirror okay here here we go again at this point aminaka diaro wo leaps out and takes her hand I think by removing the Nomo one that I've actually made it harder to remember leaps out and takes her hand pulling her out of the cave and puto tamano quickly steps in and extends the sirum Rope between her and the cave to prevent amatarasu from going back inside thus the light of both the Heavenly plane and the mortal world of Japan was restored now in Theon Shoki again a simplified version of the events take place so for example no one actually grabs amasu and amaru instead leads her out by the hand this is something I forgot to mention when it comes to all the deity names I've deferred to the coii on this the non shoi has different uh names and spellings because many of these gods have have many names so despite the restoration of the sun goddess the many deities had not forgiven susano's crimes as punishment they force him to provide a tables worth of gifts then cut off his beard and Nails finally they expel him from the Divine Realms sending him wandering through the land which leads to his wider Adventures which I'll go into in a minute uh in the Nihon Shi there is again another variant of this story uh which also has another repeat of the episode where suzano visits his sister again before his departure and once more he has to produce CS to Pro prove his sincerity at wanting to visit her but obviously I'm not going to go into that so amasu becomes more of a peripheral character for the next few sections of the kojiki and the Nihon Shoki um she kind of takes on this role of more of an authority figure who instigates events but often is not actually involved in them going forward herself a very brief summary of events before her next appearance is that according to the kojiki suzano immediately gets himself in hot water again by killing the food goddess OPP T Pim I think Pim is a variant on he uh yeah princess yeah yeah I think it's just the version of the coai US is from 1969 so it probably would be he in a more recent yeah translation he p and b sometimes get sort of interchanged depending on your makes sense suzano immediately gets into hot water again by killing the food goddess after a misunderstanding about the food he had asked her to give him in both text he is then expelled to the land of isumo uh where he finds an old man a woman and a maiden named kushinada Pim this sets in event the events we described in our dragons episodes where the family has been victimized by the eight-headed and eight tail Dragon yata noochi the old man tells suzano that once they had eight daughters but that all of them except kushinada Pim has been eaten by the dragon which he describes as covering eight valleys and mountains in size suzano then ask for permission to take Kushi nadap Pim as his wife in return for dealing with the dragon and when the man ascents he turns her into a comb which sort of comes out of left field and inserts her into his hair Bunch maybe that's keeping her safe throughout the confrontation I don't know maybe yeah he then he then makes the old man Brew eight barrels of either wine or sake depending on the text so sake is generally the Japanese equivalent of wine so it is just some people translating it a bit too literally sake literally means alcohol yeah cool uh which they then lay out for the dragon to drink yamata noochi comes and drinks from the barrels and whilst the dragon lies drunk suzano then hacks it to death this is kind of a feature I think in a lot of mythologies they introduce a monster as being this terrifying monstrous creature and then the hero just kills it yeah he at least had a strategy though wasn't just yeah I'm stronger yeah it's not I was going to have to say it's not a Heracles scenario but Heracles does that quite a lot as well like with the Hydra cauterizing the wound and stuff like that yeah yeah I'd say it's more the dragon isn't just the WF of the story yeah yeah exactly oh no we're not just beating him up to show that he's they legitimate threat right after killing the dragon susano finds a fearsome 10and long sword called the kusanagi within his body and thinking this as an extraordinary event he reports it to the heavens he gives the sword to amerasu to make up for his misdeeds and we will hear a little bit more about this sword later on in the nion sh key there is also a variant version of the tale where the sword remains in Japan and at the time of that text composition the sword was claimed to be held in oari Province at the Village of iuchi yep yeah I don't I don't know anything about that strain of tradition whatsoever and I don't know that particular Province but yeah aari and AI look right from the words we got here some of these may be provinces at the time I imagine rather than modern Japanese provinces or names that's it where where I can I referred to I will mention the the modern day prefecture on nearest modern day City but obviously we don't always have that information yeah I I struggle a little bit with some of these so yeah suzano then marries kushinada pime and builds himself a great palace according to the COI he takes several more wives and SES a vast number of children whilst according to the Nihon Shoki he SES only one son uh before descending to the UN before descending to the neverworld as he pre previously wished to visit his mother well adop depending on the depending on the account you get what I mean yeah yes complicated stepmother or mother there are a ton of variants on susano's other Deeds during this time in the Han shke but for the sake of brevity I haven't really gone into them here because he doesn't he doesn't really appear that much in the narrative going forwards five generations later susano's descendant uh Amo puyu Kino Noami has many sons with the kojiki claiming as many as 8D I've kind of really smashed these two sections together because Theon shi's version is very different these sons all desire to marry the maiden uh yagam Pim who is from the land of Inaba to the West whilst they Journey there they force one of the younger of them to lag behind in order to carry their bags this unfortunate brother was named opu Nami Noami or as we will come to know him and I will refer to him as uh for convenience going forward uh Oppo Kuni on their travels they come across a skinned rabbit lying on the ground I don't think it's actually explained how he got skinned I must admit oh no it does it's literally in the next sentence well done me so pretending to help the animal the uh Brothers tell him to bathe in salt waterer but obviously all this does is cause him great pain okuninushi then arrives and asks the rabbit what has happened and the rabbit tells him that he lost his f after tricking a group of crocodiles helping him to cross the sea but before completing the crossing he accidentally revealed that he deceived them and as such they skinned him don't mess with crocodiles like just generally good advice don't mess with crocodiles opok Kushi then instructs the rabbit to wash himself in riverwater and to rub himself in the porn of kamrass the rabbit is thus healed and he prophesizes to okuninushi that he shall be the one to marry gamma pime angering opok kuni's brothers this indeed comes to pass through a long and convoluted set of trials that I've summarized very heavily here highlights of these include Oppo kushi's Brothers succeeding in killing him twice only for him to be resurrected by the intercession of their mother uh okuninushi then flees at one point to susano's Palace where he marries his daughter and overcomes four trials and then with the weapons he gains from susano he overcomes his brothers takes Yama Pim as wife along with another woman so he has three wives totals becomes the overlord of all Japan and sets out to pacify the land according to the Nihon Shoki in an account which is just not there in the koiki he does this with the help of a dwarf named sukuna Bona no Mikoto I've never seen I would assume it would be Kona just because usually there is a vowel after a k yeah but I don't have I don't have might have actually just written that out wrong it's entirely possible okay I go with sorry that again sukuna Bona no Mikoto again not an expert on Japanese no it's fine it's like yeah hoping to hear back on my N4 exam that's like the SEC that's like level two yeah fair enough cool so this account is just not present in the koiki but according to the Nihon Shi he does this with the help of a dwarf named uh suun Bona no Mikoto who is the son of Kami mubi Noami which I remind you is one of the three primordial entities that we mentioned at the very very beginning oppa Kushi first encounters sukuna pipona when he is eating by the Sea one day when he hears a human voice coming from the water a little man then appears in a boat made from the Rind of a fruit and the feathers of a ren he is so small that opun nushi can hold him in his hand and whilst he is playing with sukuna Bona the dwarf leaps up and bites him in the cheek a Divine messenger then informs Oppo Kushi of sukuna Bona's identity that he is the most wicked of Kami musubi noam's children and warns him to love and nurture him together okuninushi and sukuna Bona nomoto then construct the sub Celestial world of Mortals where they calm the calamities of birds beasts and creeping things uh with this done sakuna pipona then returns to the Heavenly realm and opok Kun nushi subdues all of Japan as the sole ruler in the koigi he just becomes the overlord of Japan I think the the the world is already kind of subdued it's very similar to the kind of Greek hero tradition of you know the heroes going out and subduing subduing new lands from the Wilderness and the beasts that's kind of a common strand of Mythology worldwide it is yeah and also just to clarify um opoi that you're saying the other another variant of the name is ooni who I mentioned earlier yeah sorry I should have point that out yeah just so so listeners know we were talking about the same person or beit different translations it is in the next series events that amasu then helps bring about the siring of the yato Imperial house and their eventual rulership of Japan before we go into this however cofy we should go into another group who rules over us which is of course the the sponsors of this podcast the adverts that you're all dying to listen to and I don't have anything smart to say for this one here's some adverts I just want to pay my rent I just want to pay the rent please and we're back what a what a thrilling and scintillating conversation we had during that ad break crofty on the the virtues of unnamed soft drink that you're currently holding ah refreshing it's non-specific is the slogan uh right getting back to fent so we were about to talk about how amasu brings about the siring of the Amat Imperial house and their eventual rulership of Japan now according to the kojiki amatarasu eventually decides that one of her sons uh here we go am no PO Mimi no Mikoto that sounds about right from the reading I have yeah about right so this is one of the entities that had been born from the beads that susano chewed up during their swearing of OES she decides that he should go and rule over the central land of the Reed Plains the Nihon Shoki however kind of muddies the waters here by stating that am noi is actually her grandson and the visit is instigated by am no 's other grandparent Takami Musubi who again is one of the original free deities to come into existence not the same one as the one I mentioned before though however on standing on the Heavenly Bridge actually this is a good point to mention something which I haven't really gone into before which is the actual relationships of many of these uh deities together is somewhat fluid in different strands and traditions I probably should have pointed that out at an earlier point we're getting into Zeus level family spider webs yeah exactly so upon standing upon the Heavenly Bridge uh Amino o sees that the land is overrun by Oppo Kushi and the Earth Yami are under his rulership and he understandably refuses to go and rule over the land uh this also takes place after another gathering of 800 deities this Gathering uh instead decides to dispatched the bravest of the deities who is Amo POI Noami uh how however upon being dispatched amoo disappears for three years and does not return to report on his mission uh of pacifying the land uh instead using this time to Curry favor with Oppo Kuni in the nion Shoki Ami nopo's son also is dispatched to find his father and reports on what has happened but he complies with his father's wishes uh and never actually returns to make his report in the end in response the deities then dispatch am Noak Pico to complete the mission Instead This Time gifting him the quote Heavenly deer slaying bow and the Heavenly feathered arrows arme no wakao also descends to the land but on arriving he promptly does the same thing and sides with Oppo Kushi eventually marrying his daughter though in this case he actually does this because he secretly desires to become the ruler of all the lands himself it's kind of the long con he's playing after another eight years go by the gods then dispatch the Pheasant nakim nakim nakim that's it am is always me me okay that that's helpful because I think I've been saying some stuff wrong after eight years ago the gods then dispatched the feasant nakime to go and ask am Noak Capo why he has not returned report on his mission nakime lands on the catura tree by am no wapo's door and repeats the God's demands only for am no wakao to shoot him and kill him so forceful is the arrow shot that it passes through the bird and flies up to the heavens where it comes to rest by amatarasu and the primordial deity of Takami musubi Noami again was the second of those entities that came into existence right at the beginning takamimusubi picks up the arrow and seeing that there is blood on it he shows it to the other deities he then declares that if am no wakao shot his Arrow at an evil entity then he has has nothing to fear but if he has proven treacherous then he should be cursed by the arrow he then throws the arrow back through the hole that was left in the heavens and it strikes Amin Noak Aiko in his chest either as he lies in bed according to the kojiki or after resting after the Feast of the first fruits per the nion Shoki this kills him and the Weeping of his widow then draws the attention of his father and the rest of his family and they descend to the Mortal lands in order to conduct his funeral in a continuing clamor of events though at the funeral the god adiki Picone yeah I'm going to try not have to say again who was a friend of am no wakao is mistaken by The Grieving family for their son this enrages him and he responders by pulling out his 10 hands long sword and he destroys the funeral house that they have built and according to the Nihon Shoki the resulting Heap is the mountain of moama in the Mino province I don't know what actual Mountain that is though I don't know if that actually corresponds to any real mountain Monday gfu so like very Central Japan the Japanese Alps region said don't have a specific Mountain but yeah we have a rough region for you after this amatarasu asks which Dei should be sent next and the other deities decide to send the funder deity uh Tak Mika D Noam with him they dispatch Amo Tori Pune Noami which according to Philip's translation means the Heavenly bird boat deity which led him to conclude that this God May in fact have been some sort of vehicle to some extent or at least a means of traveling between the heavens and and the Earth yeah the only word I know for boat is funa but so it might be Puna no Kami but don't quote me again the these things do change a lot I am going by the two Gods then land on inasa beach in isumo and they thrust a 10and long sword into the ground round sitting cross-legged on the point which again is a thing which Japanese Cami tend to do a lot they address an inquiry towards opok Kun nushi informing him that the land he rules over is actually entrusted to the rule of amaterasu's Offspring and asks him what his intentions are now opokan nushi the game he plays on his point onwards is he's kind of too smart to fight back he knows he's going to lose against the Heavenly deities but he kind of tries to stall things as long as possible is my understanding of these events that's surv I got anyway um opun nushi responds to their query by saying that his son Koto shirushi will reply on his behalf but that he has gone out hunting and fishing in his boat and has not returned T mikati then tracks down the sun who replies that quote with fearful reverence let us present this land to The Offspring of the Heavenly deities he then escapes by stamping his foot overturning his boat and clapping his hands which transforms him into a green twig fence after which he is enshrined in the sacred grove the two Heavenly deities then inquire of okuninushi again if he has any other Sons to speak for him in the kojiki okuninushi says that he does and right on Q his other son Taki minakata shows up carrying a giant boulder on his fingertips he challenges the two deities to a test of strength and he takes a hold of takim mikati's arm who transforms it first into a comb of ice then into a sword blade this causes Tak minakata to draw back in fear and Tak mikati seizes his arm snaps it like a reed and tears it off Tak minakata understandably flees in Terror and the two deities track him down near the lake of sua or sua as it is known there Tak minakata begs for his life and pledges to yield the land of the Reed plains as the Heavenly deities have decreed upon the two deities return I think I realized his name was compc okay because I just refer to them as the two deities the paragraph uh upon the two deities return Oppo Kushi swears to abide by his son's intentions and disappear into the Unseen realm of spirits as you mentioned during your initial explanation he yields the land of Japan in return for his continued worship by the descendants of the Heavenly deities along with a magnificent Shrine on power of the Imperial powers that reaches up to the heavens and yeah as you've talked about today the shrine still exists and is known as the grand Shrine of is Zumo oiro o yashiro yeah which is another I'm not sure if I mentioned that other name for it earlier but there are a few variant names for it in the Nihon Shi these vents are Sly modified so there is no Second Son and strength contest after his first son makes his Escape uh Oppo Kushi gives the pair his spear saying that he was successful in using it to subdue the land so the Heavenly Offspring must do so too Oppo Kushi then disappears and the pair go on to do exactly that so so in both Tales after pacifying the land Tak mikati then returns to the heavens where he reports to the deities that he has at last subdued the land of Japan in the kojiki amatarasu once again orders her son am no oo am no oo to take possession of the land oh god I've just seen the name the next name you have to do it's going to be crazy however am no oi refuses once again in favor of his own son I've written in the script here deep breath you me to try it I'll have a go and fail and then you will fix it okay Amy Nigi Kuni Poo n no Mikoto I think you got all the syllables right yeah I think we deserve a clap for that that's that was impressive leave it to the Japanese question is can you do it a second time wow SL little better than get better than anything I could do uh who in a real convenient turn of events is also known as the Heavenly grandson ninigi ninigi yeah ninigi there's also a name of gods in Sumerian mythology so I can crowbar that in as well the ninigi gods yeah the gods then command ninigi that the land of plentiful Reed PL and of the fresh rice ears has been entrusted to his rule in the nonon Shi the god simply order ninigi to do so without referring to am no OC again does sort of come up again a little bit later though then in the koiki as he prepares to descend to Japan another God suddenly appears in the heavens whose Radiance shines throughout both the Heavenly and Mortal Realms amatarasu orders Amo oomi to inquire of this new God who they are and when she asked they reply that they are the Earth deity serut Biko Noami who has come forth to serve as nig's guide amasu then gathers through five deities who are involved in bringing her forth from the cave I'm going to totally chicken out on here and not repeat all their names am in noan putama amuz isi and tamya yes there we go it's very nice having you around for this she bids them to descend to the Mortal realm where they become the first five heads which the families that are involved in the religious observances of the Imperial family Clan Clan claim to descend after this amatarasu in confers upon ninigi the mirror and the magatama beads that were used to lure her out of the cave along with the sword kusanagi that susano extracted from the body of yamata noochi I believe that these items are the free sacred Treasures or imperial regalia of Japan correct regalia they are the Imperial regalia y which are still said to be in the possession of the Imperial family today however these items are supposedly kept at shrines Clos to the public and Only The Sword and the beads have been displayed in public as part of The Emperor's enthronement um most recently will be the current Emperor whose name is now escaping M yep um and I know his Imperial name is Raya but I can't I can't remember his birth name at the end of the H era yeah r i I mentioned him later as well um EMP emperor Narito that was it yeah I was about to say it but I thought it was wrong it's always my excuse I remember the era and never the emperor's name it's but during their appearance these items were kept hidden in boxes there is like a description of like a monk a couple of centuries back when they were refurbishing the box which holds the sword like of what it looked like which is in like I'm not going to go into it here but that's interesting if you guys want to go and read that it's interesting it's interesting like how richly packed the thing is when you get into the description it's not what you'd expect it's like boxes within boxes with Nigi now fully equipped amatarasu bids another group of deities to accompany him in order to perform religious functions and to help defend him in the main Narrative of the Nihon shogi however none of this happens uh on Taki mikad dutti's return ninigi is simply told to go down to land of reeds and he does so by himself however yet again the version found in the Kiki is included as a variant in the Nihon Shoki with cutab biko's help ninigi then Japan by pushing through the many clouds of heaven and arrives on the peak of Mount takpo on the island of kuushi kushu kushu sorry oh yeah that is right in here I've just misread it the island of kushu there he builds a pow that stretches from the Earth to the edge of the heavens soon after he meets a beautiful Maiden named kamu atatu Pim at the Cape of cassa who is the daughter of the god ooyama Tumi Noami in the kojiki ninigi asks her father permission to marry her and he is Overjoyed at his request in addition to Camu ATA to Pim he offers Nigi aund tables full of gifts along with his eldest daughter iaga Pim however ninigi thinks that ienaga Pim is ugly and he rejects her this shames her father who declares that quote the reason I offered both my daughters together was this I presented them swearing an oath that if he should employ ienaga Pim the life of the children of the Heavenly deities even though the snow should fall and the wind should blow should be ever like a rock and should continue eternally firmly without being moved however now that he has returned iaga Pim and kept only Camu ATA tup Pim the life of the child of the Heavenly deities shall continue only for the interval of the blossoming of the trees it is through this act that ninigi unwittingly gives up his immortality and that all subsequent Emperors of Japan have lived either mortal or in the case of the more legendary ones semi mortal lifespans there's no one pulling a you know 30,000 year reign or anything in there anymore it's all you know 100 years-ish sort of territory I do think that's quite unfair to Nigi though isn't it like he didn't know that that's it although it is he has been rude as well so sort of gets what he deserves I guess oh yeah and take a drink this account is also included as an alternative account in the Nihon Shing however in the main account this all just goes completely unmentioned and ninigi simply beds her without marrying her at all in fact kamu ATA T Then Fall was pregnant after one night with Nigi and after a quite complicated set of controversy over the child's paternity uh which I've not gone into for time she gives birth to their son huder no Mikoto later she also gives birth to Sons uh poser no Mikoto and POI no Mikoto in then hon Shoki however she gives birth to all three of them at once rather than in sequence now according to the kojiki after they are grown poderi and poori go fishing one day POI requests that they exchange their Hooks and after POI refuses three times he finally gives in however POI fails to catch a single fish with his brother's hook and ultimately ends up losing it in the sea poderi demands the hook back and despite POI offering him 500 Hooks and his 10 hands long sword is compensation he will only be satisfied by the original hook in the Nihon Shi the tail begins slightly differently with the two Rovers making a trade of gifts and after poderi grows dissatisfied with the trade demands his gift a hook back only to discover that poori has already lost it so as POI is weeping on the shore the Kami cotti comes across him after hearing his tale cotti makes for him a small boat and tells him to sail in it until he reaches the Palace of the sea deity wat Tumi and then to climb a Cura tree he will find there next to a well the implication here according to uh Donald Philippi I believe is that in doing this POI is actually going under the sea rather than across it to some distant land um POI does so and as he is waiting a top the tree a serving maid comes to draw the water but when she offers him it in a jeweled version he loosens a jewel from his own neck and spits it into the vessel the serving girl returns The Vessel to the daughter of the ca deity uh toyotama B yeah this is where the B P he thing is coming in here I think the reason might be is because I've copied this from the Theon Shoki rather than the kojiki what was I saying oh yeah the serving girl returns a vessel to the daughter of the sea de toyot tamim who sees the new Jewel and guesses that a newcomer has arrived I'm coming to see POI for herself the two of them immediately fall in love and after they marry poia lives there with her father the ca de for three years eventually however he remembers his mission and with the sea dei's help they gather together all the large and small fish of the sea and ask him about the fish hook the fish replied there is something stuck in a seab bream's throat which I had for tea last night so that's a love a bit of serendipity and on examining it they find the hook so in order to get revenge on poer for forcing POI to go on of his quest the CD bids poori to return the hook to his brother from behind his back whilst warning him that the hook isn't ill Omen he also givs poori with two Jewels one to raise the tide and one to lower it and instructs him that if poderi makes a rice Patty on elevated land he should make one on lowland and if poderi makes one on lowland he should do the opposite POI then returns to the lands above the water with a crocodile for escort here wari so that's crocodile actually being helpful rather than skinning someone just this once yeah here POI uses the jewels to devastate his brother's rice patties and to make him grow even poorer angered by this poderi attempts to attack his brother but POI uses the jewels to raise the water and to drown his brother not actually drown but make him drowning is the word I'm grasping for there poderi pleads with his brother in anguish and POI spares his life in return for his submission so as this is going on um toyot tamim has been pregnant for some time and judging that it would be wrong for the child of a Heavenly deity to be born in the ocean she ascends to the lands above there a parition Hut is built for her to give birth him but her labor comes on before it is completed she warns her husband that to give birth she must return to her true form and uh in a series of events that's quite similar to the AFF forementioned story of isanami and isan in yomi uh she warns him not to watch again no one learns anything in Japanese mythology so POI ignores her warning and as he spies on her she turns into either a giant crocodile or a dragon depending on the text which causes him to run away in fear toyotama beim is shamed by this and after giving birth to her son she returns to the Sea and seals the border between the land and the ocean behind her so that's actually quite a common Trope that you see in a lot of um a lot of Mythology and folklore involving sea beings where when they're wrong somehow they will like seal the border between the Sea and the land above which explains why humans can't breathe underwater that sort of thing like we saw that in the Fairies episode before when talking about Irish um folklore yeah and also leads to beliefs in certain certain things being sort of gateways between the Sea and the land above yeah I think that's one of those things where that it's just a such a obvious border is the surface of the sea it's not we're not suggesting that there's a connection between Irish and Japanese mythology yeah so according to the koiki later on however she misses the child and she sends her sister Tama Yori beim to nurse him in the main version of the Nihon Shoki however she simply passes away after the ceing of the land and the ocean so coming to the culmination then of my section and of the tale uh POI continues to live in the palace that his father built at takao for 500 years before his death he was survived by their son deep breath here we go last big one here we go AMU p p Nagisa T GAA P puki Apu nomoto got all syllables wow I I I stumbled partway but I almost did it uh or the simplified version I've used for the next sentence UGA puki Aus yeah so ugay puki Apu takes his aunt who yes had just done nursing him as his wife that's great well done that's I can't really vocalize my thoughts on that it's just and together they have four children these areu Mikoto uh mik Nuno Mikoto who heads East into the land of Tokyo uh Ina Pino Mikoto who Journeys to the land of his mother Beneath the Sea and most notably for our purposes camo Yamato iare Biko no Mikoto who is later on comes to be known as jimu jimu jimmu the D the double consonant means a sort of pause so jimu jimu yeah is it j i n mu or J M M yeah so jimu yeah so there's a character in hirana and kakana um which means this little pause and when it's translated into lat Latin alphabet it's translated as a double consonant can I get way of saying the word Jim followed by moo basically yeah yeah okay Jim moo yeah Jim Mo okay can I just interject with one little thing on that sentence before so yeah um where you mentioned the land Tokyo the name Tokyo for those who don't know literally means Eastern Capital so it it probably doesn't necessarily refer to the exact area where modern day Tokyo is now because would have been the Eastern Capital at that time yeah or or just form making his own capital in the Eastern region potentially because Japan's actual imperial capital moved around as well as we talked about in the Yokai episode that's it Tokyo didn't get its name the modern city now until um the ma Restoration in 19 century when it became the official Capital yeah it's when the it's when the emperor moved back from Kyoto basically was going to take up the Shogun seat effectively yeah but I think I might be getting that wrong but that's my fake it was kind of like a symbolic Assumption of power now that um TOA was it to um yobu was itasu might be yoshinobu yeah Yos um when he formally resigned uh the Baku kuate whatever it's called so yeah is when we're not saying that he moved to Tokyo Bay or you know the modern day region as we would know it simply that he in the vicinity yeah he he set up his own capital or Palace in the East yeah that makes more sense so at this point both the kojiki and the Nihon Shoki transition from their early narrative to the Deeds of Japan's largely mythical early Emperors as we're now starting to wander away from our original topic of amatarasu I have summarized the events that lead to Camu Yamato's inment pretty brief fashion I'll be honest uh so C yumato consults his brother uh IU Seno who was the one who didn't the one which didn't go anywhere basically where the best place would be to govern the Kingdom from before announcing that he is heading Eastward he and his clan do so staying at many palaces throughout the land and meet an earth Cami riding on a tortoise's back that camo yumato names SAU Pico who he takes on as an attendant as a journey through a place called Tatu they are attacked by an army led by Naga suniko of toui there iuo is wounded in The Hand by an arrow and decides that they should go around the island so they can attack from the East and have the Sun at their back so again the sun symbology of power effectively and Advantage however the wound proves so severe that he dies along the way and kamu Yamato receives a Divine message to instead follow either a giant according to the kojiki or a three-legged Crow which is according to the nion Shoki that that the heavens have basically sent to guide him after fing the efforts of the two brothers known as Yi ukasi and Oto ukasi to Ambush them uh and killing the quote empty Mighty tailed men of the tuti gomo camo Yamato is infron at Osaka as Emperor jimu Nigi P Pino Makoto who according to various accounts is either the son or older brother of uh ninigi then arrives having descended from the heavens so I think he is the son of if I just scroll back up I haven't written this out but I think in some versions he is the son of am noi who was the original supposed to go down yeah and Rule but refused so this is a figure who has some relative legitimate claim to rulership himself but he basically arrives and submits to jimu as Emperor and presents him with the three Heavenly Treasures which I think I think that's the Nihon Shi version where he where Nigi doesn't go down with the free Treasures am that Ro yeah jimu would then go on to reign as Emperor until the ripo age of 126 which I'm hoping for personally and founds the Imperial House of Japan and with that cofy I'm going to hand over to you but first we have to hand over to someone much more important who govern govern our Destinies and rulers from the heavens as part of the three primordial deities I have no idea where H the advertisers I have no idea where I'm going with this um here's some adverts and we're back from our mandated uh five times daily worship of the advertisers so so we're done with our mandatory breaks for the day now so it's just on to cofty your concluding section on uh amerasu you've just pointed out to me in the break that I actually missed something out so there's that and then also your additional influencers SE so yeah I'll be covering a bit on the development of worship of amatarasu and other gods that may have influenced the version of amatarasu that we know now before I go in go into it I will say all of the uh checking pronunciations with me that Charles did it is based on me knowing the modern rules of Japanese syllables yeah so that some of this is all Japanese yeah that's it like we mentioned the change from P to B to he there's changes like C becoming she yeah and things like that so my versions aren't perfect either mine are just I have an idea of how it works in modern Japanese so I want to make you all know that I'm not an expert or even very good only I only really know about that change because it's in Chinese as well because like the name SEI for example is spelled cixi and it's like yeah it's in in the angle in the angle size version so yeah anyway sorry continue yep so just getting that disclaimer in that my Japanese is bad before we yeah no I mean you're more qualified than everyone in this room so it's quite an honor yeah quite an honor so let's let's bring the episode to a close with my last section let's do this so as I mentioned in my opening section um since before the Kaki was written the center of worship for amatarasu was EA jingu or EA Grand Shrine on the Eon coast of modern day M prefecture which is about 100 km south of the city of Nagoya so I'll discuss a bit about the origins of EA shrine and how that sort of feeds into what some theories about the origins of amerasu itself so EA jingu today is a massive complex containing dozens of shrines with the two main ones being the inner Shrine naiku which is dedicated to amatarasu and the outer Shrine geeku which is dedicated to toyok a god of Agriculture to give an idea of the scale here geeku is roughly 4 kilometers from naiku and there is a whole District of EA City between the two but they are still considered part of the same Shrine complex the earliest evidence of worship at eay was found at naiku and it dates back to the 5ifth century ad mataya teshi a historian of Shino worship says that the style of the structures in naiku suggests that it predates the adoption of amatarasu as an ancestor to the Imperial family and so it may have been dedicated to a different solar deity specific to the local clans of eay at the time had the shrine been commissioned by the Y as a shrine to amasu then the buildings would have matched the style of the Imperial Court however for eay this was not the case the most important relic of eay jingu is the mirror of amatarasu yatan no kagami which as we've said is one of the three Imperial regalia of Japan matsum cites a Professor okoda SEI whose work is only in Japanese unfortunately for us today this professor explains that the box which stored the mirror the munira has the same design as the stone coffins which had been used in eay at the time suggesting that the mirror at eay was originally A Relic to this local Sun God and was later either identified as the mirror from story of amatarasu or was incorporated into the legend and added as the eay gods were turn were sort of overtaken by Amasia so who was this previous solar god um before amatarasu the Nihon Shoki tells of an allegedly historical figure that matayah believes was in fact the god of the Shrine in 474 ad the 18th year of the reign of Emperor uraku the Nihon Shoki tells of the Imperial Army attacking IGA which at the time was part of isay Province their mission was to Smite the local Lord Asahi noo though I can't find any details of why he was being punished he was allegedly a fearsome Archer and the attackers hesitated for two days from the threat of his arrows before finally advancing and slaying him so the name Asahi literally translates as Morning Sun some of you might have heard of the Asahi shinbun the Asahi new paper which takes that name as well or asah beia Morning Sun beer um well uko can mean male person male child or son son is in a person's male child not solar yeah and so the name can be interpreted as the Son Of The Morning Sun matsuma interprets the name as simply Morning Sun malech child so being a native being a native Japanese speaker I should defer to him on that on that translation and just say that I know the Ki involved are child and Son male child but his interpretation is male person so we will go with that that kind of me to sounds like a little bit like um there's kind of a similar thing goes on with how uh Christian uh Scholars treated like Celtic myth where they would make up Saints and replace that were actually probably a Celtic deity of some sort like the most famous is sa St Bri Bri for example who may have been originally A God Called bridgid or under some interpretations could have been like a priestess of the site called bridgid yeah something like that that's been kind of coop it's kind of this co-opting thing going on in mythologies of where you you don't completely alienate the person the the people you're taking the thing from but you're like oh you got sort of the right idea yeah exactly like we saying incorporating Gods properly into the narrative earlier like we were talking about or incorporating aspects of them like you say you got sought of the idea yeah so matah interprets this Legend as telling the conquest and the conversion of the local solar religion by the am retold like say turn the god simply into a rebellious Lord so as not to leave evidence of eay being associated with any God prior to amerasu as with many things that we have discussed in previous episodes this hypothesis does hinge entirely on a name yeah so could be that there was a historical asah noasa who was named because of his rulership over a province known for it Shrine to the Sun and so believed to be the child of the Sun God himself or if the figure was invented for nioki and the writer named himself for that same reason it's one of those situations I think I said to you before we came on the recording for this um it's one of those situations where the evidence in favor of it is very scanty but we have no evidence against it as well so it's like you can't just dismiss it out of hand but it's very dubious exactly but we know that there are other mythical or legendary events in the kuki and nanoki that do parallel historical conflicts between Clans so max Maya's interpretation does have Merit I'd say okay it's one of those things where we can never really know yeah yeah exactly so so since the nion Shoki presents a version of history in which the yam version of Shinto is the true version of Shinto it depicts EA Grand Shrine as always being dedicated to amaso by telling a myth of how the shrine was founded so originally from the time of Emperor jimmo the yat Mira was kept within the Imperial Palace in the 1st Century BC the emperor suin became scared of the power of amatarasu and he had the mirror since be enshrined in the village of kasui in Yamato Province his daughter princess toy usuki became the Sao The High Priestess of amatarasu at kasui when Emperor swein inherited the throne his daughter who only named as Princess Yamato or Yamato himim was appointed as the Sayo she was tasked with finding a more suitable place to enshrine the mirror of amatarasu and after wandering for some time she came to the Isuzu River amatarasu spoke to her and said that this was the appropriate place Place her Shrine and so she settled there and founded EA jingu from then on the high priestess of amatarasu at eay has always been a daughter of the Imperial family so today the high priestess is sayako Kuroda the sister of his majesty Emperor Narito though she's no longer officially a princess because she relinquished the title when she married yeah that's a thing about the Japanese World family if you marry a commoner I believe you stop being a princess yeah but you you do retain you do retain your title as The High Priestess of amasu that's simply tied to birth rather than the princess title is kind of unfair because obviously like the mail line doesn't have that prescription against them but yeah but if if we uh start trying to dis all the gender RS in Japan not very uh this will not be a very fruitful line of discussion that way so matxa discusses the importance of two aspects of this story to the history of eay and of amasu worship firstly he doesn't believe that the mirror was the original emblem of the previous Sun God or believe that it was installed immediately as the emblem of amatarasu he says that the original sacred object of the shrine was a pillar called the Shino miash which stood under the floor of the main hall his research included details of the rituals giving offerings to this pillar the omo noi Festival the the first day was a ritual in which torches were lit and offerings made to the pillar which could only be performed by indigenous priestesses not by the Sayo the second day um held a ceremony outside of the niku Shrine in which the Sayo paid respects to the de followed by the bow of a sakaki tree being placed before the shrine and then a dance by the court maidens the pillar would be replaced by the mirror sometime between the sixth and the 7eventh centuries and records show that in the year 721 a new tradition had emerged one which survives to this day the Canam mesai festival or or matser which literally means Great Festival which is held now on the 15th and 16th of October this ritual has Imperial envoys bringing offerings to dedicate to amatarasu followed by a ritual Musical and dance performance called a kagura to entertain amasu and commemorate her enshrinement these are held at the outer Shrine with a ritual offering made at the same time at the Imperial Palace on the second day offerings of sliced salted Abalone snails are dedicated to amatarasu at the inner Shrine and yeah that look on your face sorry I just grimaced when you said that but I did when I read it as well yeah like no thanks gods have different tastes so this change is likely the final step in a gradual process that matsuma describes of converting the shrine from worship of the indigenous God to amatarasu the other important aspect of the N Shoki story and the gradual change to amatarasu worship is the importance of the Sayo and specifically their gender as the influence of this Factor on amatarasu herself mataya believes that amatarasu was originally a male deity known as ameru although both names are gender neutral when the Imperial family began to identify amateru as their ancestral deity around the 5th Century ad they began to have Sayo serve him matsah says that this was viewed as the priestesses serving the deity as his wives a manner sometimes seen in shrines to other deities over successive generations of sa their influence led to amerasu becoming seen instead as female that this happened to amerasu but not to other gods with Priestess wives was likely due to the power and influence of the Sayo themselves as influential members of the Imperial family and so amaterasu's image changed to mirror the Royals who served them matsumara kazuwa of kokugakuin University which is a Shinto Affiliated University in shabuya in too expands on the depiction of amaterasu's gender and theorizes that for the amatarasu myth to be as successful as it was in cementing the Amato's right to rule it was vital for amatarasu to be a female but also that she was a masculine female which goes back again to events such as amatarasu presenting as a man when she stepped out to face susano yeah and other similar Tales where she does present in a very masculine manner while he doesn't discuss the potential origins of amatarasu as a male God it does fit well that these elements would develop over time in the way that matsuma describes so matsumura describes ruling Gods being as an ideal projection of men in a male dominated Society particularly early Japan in which men were seen as more cultured while women were seen as Clos to Nature this closeness to Nature is seen in a derogatory sense with the act of giving birth deemed as polluted impure or inferior okay yeah I hope that no one at home was expecting this section depicting amatu transitioning from male to female as Progressive in any way yeah because it ain't so amerasu although female is depicted as being free from this pollution both in terms of her parentage and her Offspring as she was born entirely from isagi and so born of culture and not nature and as she is able to produce her five male offspring without the need for sex or pregnancy through the challenge with susano where susano produced the male children from the Jews containing amasu Essence and so the Yamato line was able to originate from a mother who did not suffer the same fate as isami and so by being more pure and cultured than other goddesses was a sign of the superiority of the Amato Clan even as the other clans were also descended from Gods yeah that that makes a lot more sense now that that's the method that they the myths have have the actual siring of her descendants that go on to sire the the what you call the the Imperial family as a result yeah that kind of then legitimizes them as like well we don't have this initial stain that everyone else theoretically does exactly kind kind of like Superior it's kind of like if in the medieval times the Holy Roman Emperor was a guy who was like you all had original sin except for me yeah that's it it's again legitimizing their power here through through myth through myth so as well as a male solar deity there are two other deities who together have been theorized to be potential precursors to amasu uh these are datas you've mentioned before Charles am no also known as sarame and her husband sarutahiko as you mentioned am no was the goddess who helped draw amatarasu out from the Heavenly Rock cave um so Aiko was the ancestral god of the ujin notsi gimi clan who just so happened to be from the region of eay one of the most famous holy sites of eay the Mayo iwa or wedded rocks were originally associated with sariko and Amo so the Rocks today are a pair of rocks with a sacred shimawa rope between them the same kind of rope yeah that you see hanging from tari Gates on the spring and Autumn equinoxes worshippers watch the sun rise from between these two rocks Behind These two rocks there used to be a third Rock which is now below sea level but used to be visible between the two this rock was believed to be the gate to the Sea God's kingdom the folklorist akimat toia explains that prior to Yamato rule many Clans in Japan saw the sea as the realm of the Gods inherently connected to the sky Sarah as the Sun God and his wife amuz the sea goddess ruled together and each day am no received sariko into her undersea Palace at the end of the day and each morning helped him return to the mortal world through the Gateway at the weeded rocks sarutahiko also had aspects of a sea god due to his time each night under the sea and both together were revered as part of rituals for fish fertility and the prosperity of fishing Clans Amo uz shared aspects of a sun goddess by aiding sarutahiko in returning to the mortal world so akima says that amatarasu absorbed the solar aspects of both these deities into her own history with sarutahiko becoming the leader of the Earthly Cami in some versions of amaterasu's story Sarat would oppose The Descent of the Heavenly grandson to Earth and Amo us accompanying him would convince saruta to let them pass and would later marry him Bridging the Heavenly and Earthly cam so at this point we have quite comprehensively covered the origins of amatarasu both in the written mythology and in the development of the shinta religion being the ancestor of the Imperial line she has continued to have influence on the Imperial house both in legends of the early Emperors and Imperial ceremonies today so a part of the story of jimmu that Charles didn't entire cover had amatarasu being particularly instrumental at the time when jimu and his brother left kushu in search of an appropriate seat to rule from and began their Journey Eastward amatarasu would intervene with their arrival in central Japan as Charles discussed when they battled with the local warlord which led to its's death in battle and jimmu's Retreat jimmu saw that the reason for his defeat was because his armies were opposing the Rising Sun and so sailed eastwards to the Key Peninsula which is where M Nara and wakayama prefectures are today so it includes eay and includes what would become the Yamato lands upon Landing their enemy Gods Enchanted the Army placing them into a deep sleep however amatarasu commanded one of the Thunder Gods Tak mikazuchi to Aid jimu amatarasu sent a dream to a local named takak kuragi telling him to deliver aid for jimmu while Tak mikazuchi dropped his sword FSU nitama into his Storehouse takak karaji delivered the sword to jimu and its power broke the spell and destroyed the gods of their enemies allowing the Army to awaken then as Charles explained amatarasu sent the giant Crow yatagarasu to guide jimmu through the mountains of wakayama to attack nagas uniko and avenge jimmu's brother having conquered the region jimmu then established his Capital at kashihara which is in Nara where the Emperors would rule until the capital moved to Kyoto today the emperor's connection to amasu is still honored and as I missed this in my references the information that I'm going to say here comes from kokugakuin University's digital Museum so every year the emperor performs two rituals at the winter solstice the chin conai and the nesai the nesai is a harvest ritual to thank the gods for the year's prosperity and to pray for it to continue in the New Year this ceremony isn't specifically connected to amasu as there are many gods whose roles Grant Prosperity the chin conai however is a ritual that must take place prior to the N which is to strengthen the emperor's connection to amatarasu and so is needed as part of these preparations the name means ceremony for the Repose or pacification of the Soul as the winter solstice is the day with the least sunlight and so the power of a sun god is at its weakest the ceremony is intended to enhance the power of the emperor's soul and strengthen the connection to amasu while she is weaker this ritual includes the ukun noi a ceremony in which a lady of the Court stands on a box called an ukifune and Strikes it 10 times with a spear this is intended to mirror the scene from The Heavenly Rock cave myth where Amino danced and drummed on a container while amatarasu hid in a cave this is followed by the tarino a ceremony where the empress kimono is shaken from right to left 10 times which apparently mimics a ceremony in which 10 offerings were given to pray for the strength of Emperor jimu don't have any more details on how that's connected though it's I'm a bit unsure on the year in which an emperor ascends to to the throne a special version of the conai and nasai are performed called the douri which is to unite the emperor's soul with amatarasu however details on this one are quite sparse much of the ceremony is performed behind closed doors and the only rituals that we know about are the parts which are ordinarily in Kanai and an event where the emperor reads and appeals to the gods before eating and offering of r kelp milet and Abalone allegedly sharing them with amatarasu this sharing of an offering between him and amatarasu is seen as consummating their Union as Emperor and God and so with that I think we've covered just about everything that we can on amuras for today quite a lot more than I expected when uh you first mentioned it I mean obviously we kind of not not padded but we did increase the runtime by going into a lot of detail on the The Creation myth in particular but it's one of those where if you don't summarize it it just becomes very difficult to comprehend what's actually going on if you skip back and forth to all the specific bits of amasu in that's it it's much best to have as one single narrative even when amasu isn't part of that narrative exactly well folks I hope you all learned a lot today I did in the course of researching this I'm sure you did as well cofy and it's just a shame that we couldn't have done this whil you were actually in Japan but how life shook out unfortunately but it's also good to be recording in person yeah that's quite good as well so in speaking of future recordings actually uh so the kind of plan going forward is a little little fluid I would say for us we have the site problem cofy you're back at the moment but you're going back to Japan for a little while yep I've got two months over there just to finish up some stuff with my day job yeah so that leaves us a little bit of a pickle because I don't want to have anywhere near that length of a Hiatus again it was like four months was it like we last thing was in September so it's like October November December late January yeah and you're sick of saying it's been a while yeah yeah exactly so we've got a couple things we could do you've said in advance you're probably not going to have the time to record anything whilst you're in Japan you might be able to write something but not have time to record it as that'll put us quite a bit past the normal two months or whatever it takes us to get together to do stuff it looks like I'm either going to have to do a solo episode or I'm going to have to find someone to do uh a guest slot again which is possible I'll see who out there answers the poll so to speak but we'll see what happens there's also currently a poll for anyone P any patrons out there who aren't aware there's a poll going on uh over on patreon.com theor hisr to decide what the next topic is it was going to be the next topic which probably going to be the next book one because we have another thing planned we're not sure exactly the order we have an episode planned when I'm back again so I'll give the hint for that as for that then but just to let everybody know the options on that poll on the patreon are uh it's going to his crypted theme this time again so the options are the lot Ness monster Mothman the Jersey Devil and Phantom big cats of Britain so the current state of affairs at this time is that uh Phantom big cats of Britain is leading but only by one vote so it could go anywh whatsoever just letting you guys know about that and over to the hint cofy so for my next episode we are going to be reacting to the original unboxing video or unposting video if that's the word just for the pedants out there yeah we are going to use the popular title and everything because it's a title everyone knows but we're aware it's not yeah it's not it's not that's I can't say anymore about giving it away yeah don't get mad at us in the comments yeah right then so thank you folks for listening um any final words cofty uh just that I'm going to go and beg the embassy to let me back into Japan after I've just insulted them so much yeah exactly that's going to be a fun time you'll be on your knees in front of a is it winter Japan of course it's winter in Japan still Northern Hemisphere still Northern Hemisphere it's going to be a fun experience all right folks take care hopefully we'll talk to you again I keep saying soon hopefully it will be true this time mat hey folks it's Charles here in post howdy hello hi hey I just wanted to say you know we might have enjoyed oursel today with these ad related ramblings but that doesn't mean that the Shilling has to stop by any means so welcome to the Shing corner and I just wanted to let you guys know that uh if you want to support this podcast further if you enjoyed it somehow then you can always head on over to previously mentioned patreon.com theocrat I said theore hisstocrat in the episode please don't beat me the where you could always sign up to help us out a little bit in addition to this if you're listening on audio platforms such as Spotify and all good places that uh podcasts are available along with some pretty bad ones as well we'd like to say you could always nip on over to youtube.com/ theocrat and watch the video version all right folks thank you take care bye

Channel: The Histocrat

Views: 36,987

Keywords: japanese mythology documetnary, japanese mythology podcast, mythology podcast, japanese podcast

Id: a87Tb27UE4Y

Length: 144min 1sec (8641 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024