Amaterasu and the Myth of the Heavenly Rock Cave: Eclipses, the Birth of Kagura and the Sacred Mirror
The Day the World Went Dark: The Greatest Drama in Japanese Myth
The sun vanishes, heaven and earth sink into pitch-black darkness, and evil spirits run rampant as the world falls into chaos. Among all the stories in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, Japan's oldest chronicles, the most dramatic, the one with the largest cast of gods, and the one that most vividly reveals the ancient Japanese view of the cosmos is the myth of Ama-no-Iwato, the Heavenly Rock Cave.
Amaterasu Omikami is the sun goddess, the highest deity in Japanese mythology and the ancestral goddess of the imperial family. Her younger brother Susanoo, the wild god of storms, ran riot in the heavenly realm of Takamagahara. Angered and grieved by his violence, Amaterasu shut herself inside a cave in heaven and sealed its rock door tight.
With the sun goddess hidden, both the heavenly realm and the earthly world fell into endless night. The voices of malevolent gods swarmed like summer flies, and every kind of disaster broke out at once. Facing this desperate crisis, the myriad gods gathered on the dry riverbed of the Heavenly Yasu River and held a grand ritual of renewal to bring the sun back.
This myth is far more than an old tale. It holds clues to ancient memories of solar eclipses, to the birth of Japan's own tradition of laughter and performance known as kagura, and to the spiritual meaning of the Yata no Kagami, the sacred mirror that is first among the Three Imperial Regalia.
Eclipses and the Winter Solstice: A Comparative View
The motif of a sun deity hiding in a cave while the world is plunged into darkness is not unique to Japan. It appears in myths around the world, from Osiris in Egypt to Baldr in Norse myth and Persephone in Greece, as a universal archetype.
Mythologists and astronomers point to two natural phenomena whose memory may be reflected in the Iwato myth.
The first is the powerful collective memory of a total solar eclipse. In broad daylight, the sun is suddenly swallowed by the moon's shadow, the sky turns dark as night, the temperature drops, and birds and animals grow restless. For ancient people, a total eclipse, when the order of the heavens seemed to collapse without warning, was the most terrifying experience imaginable, a sign that the world might be ending.
Astronomical calculations suggest that a major total eclipse was visible over the Japanese archipelago around 247 or 248, close to the death of Queen Himiko of Yamatai, and some scholars have suggested that this turbulent period of the sun's death and rebirth was turned into myth.
The second is the ritual of the sun's death and revival at the winter solstice. In the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice is the shortest day of the year, when the sun's light is weakest. Ancient people held special rites of renewal on that night, called tamafuri, to reinvigorate the weakened sun and call back a new light of life. Seen this way, the Iwato myth tells the yearly cycle of death and rebirth as a drama of the gods.
Interestingly, the chronicles portray Amaterasu not only as a source of light but also as the mistress of sacred weaving, who weaves garments for the gods, and as a guardian of agriculture who tends rice in sacred fields. The direct trigger for her retreat was Susanoo's desecration of the sacred weaving hall: he broke through its roof and hurled in a horse that had been flayed backward. The life-giving warmth of the sun joined with weaving and rice-growing, the foundations of civilization.
Here we see the deep compassion and fertility that the ancient Japanese entrusted to their sun goddess.
Ame-no-Uzume's Dance and the Power of Laughter: The Birth of Kagura
The gods did not try to pry open the rock door by force. Instead, Omoikane, the god of wisdom, devised an ingenious plan: to stir Amaterasu's curiosity and a touch of jealousy through a festival.
They gathered the long-crowing birds of the eternal land and made them crow. They had the smith gods forge a great mirror and curved jewels, and hung them on the branches of a sacred sakaki tree. The star of the ritual was Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess of the performing arts.
Ame-no-Uzume climbed onto an upturned tub before the cave and stamped out a rhythm. In a state of divine possession, she bared her breasts and loosened her skirt, performing a wild and ecstatic dance. The myriad gods roared with laughter until the heavens shook.
Hearing this laughter, Amaterasu wondered why the gods were celebrating so joyfully when the whole world should have been lost in darkness without her. She opened the rock door just a crack and peeked outside.
Ame-no-Uzume's dance is the direct origin of noh, kyogen, kabuki and the kagura dances still offered at shrines throughout Japan. The word kagura is thought to come from kamukura, "the seat of the gods," meaning a festive space where people welcome the gods and rejoice with them. For the ancient Japanese, laughter was not mere entertainment. It was the strongest magic of all, a force that could blow away the fear of death and the defilement of darkness and summon back the light of life.
The Sacred Mirror and One's Own Reflection
When Amaterasu peeked out, Ame-no-Uzume told her, "We are rejoicing because a god even more noble than you has appeared." At that moment, the gods held out the Yata no Kagami, the sacred mirror.
Mistaking her own radiant reflection for another noble deity, Amaterasu leaned forward for a closer look. Instantly Ame-no-Tajikarao, the god of strength who had been hiding beside the door, took her hand and pulled her out. The gods quickly stretched a sacred shimenawa rope across the entrance so she could not go back, and brilliant sunlight once again filled the world.
The ending carries a deep philosophical meaning. What drew Amaterasu out and restored the light was not someone else but her own sacred image reflected in the mirror.
At the Inner Shrine of Ise Jingu, the Yata no Kagami is enshrined in the innermost sanctuary as the sacred embodiment of Amaterasu. Before the main hall of a Shinto shrine, a round mirror is often placed in front of the worshipper. When you look into it, you see not the image of a god but yourself with your hands joined in prayer. There is a well-known saying that if you remove ga, the self, from kagami, the mirror, what remains is kami, the divine.
The teaching of the mirror left by the Iwato myth is a timeless guide: look again at the light within you, step out of the darkness of doubt, and be reborn.
The spirit of Amaterasu, symbolized by this mirror, has been carried on without interruption for more than 1,300 years through the Shikinen Sengu, the ceremony in which the shrine buildings and sacred treasures of Ise are rebuilt every twenty years in a cycle of eternal renewal. On the night the sacred object is moved from the old sanctuary to the new one, every light is extinguished, and priests carry the mirror through deep darkness, screened by pure white silk.
The scene is a solemn reenactment of the opening of the Heavenly Rock Cave. The life force of the sun, dying and being reborn again and again, lives on. The Iwato myth is not a fossil of the past; it still breathes in the spiritual depths of Japan today.
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References
- Miura Sukeyuki, Kogoyaku Kojiki: Jindai-hen, Bunshun Bunko, 2002
- Matsumae Takeshi, Nihon Shinwa no Keisei, Hanawa Shobo, 1970
- Yoshida Atsuhiko, Nihon Shinwa no Genryu, Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2007
- Origuchi Shinobu, Kodai Kenkyu: Minzokugaku-hen, Kadokawa Sophia Bunko, 2017
- Saito Hideki, Amaterasu to Ama-no-Iwato, Seidosha, 2015
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