The Myth of the Heavenly Rock Cave
Susanoo, judging himself the winner of the vow-contest with Amaterasu, ran wild: he broke down the ridges of her rice fields, filled in the ditches, defiled the hall of the first-fruits festival, and finally flung a backwards-flayed piebald colt through the roof of the sacred weaving house, where a weaving maiden, struck by her shuttle, died. Amaterasu, enraged, opened the Heavenly Rock Cave, went in, and shut the stone door. The Plain of High Heaven and the Central Land of Reed Plains fell into unbroken night; the voices of wicked gods swarmed like summer flies, and every calamity broke loose at once.
The eight million gods gathered on the dry bed of the Tranquil River of Heaven, where the wise god Omoikane laid the plan. They set the long-crying cocks crowing, had the mirror Yata-no-Kagami forged and the great curved jewels strung, and hung both on an uprooted sakaki tree; Ame-no-Koyane intoned liturgies while the strongman Ame-no-Tajikarao hid beside the door. Then Ame-no-Uzume overturned a wooden tub, stamped upon it, and danced possessed, baring her breasts and letting her skirt-cord fall, until the gods' laughter shook the heavens. Puzzled that anyone could rejoice in a darkened world, Amaterasu cracked open the door; told that a nobler deity had appeared, she saw her own radiance in the proffered mirror and leaned out, at which Tajikarao hauled her forth and a rope of straw was stretched across the entrance behind her. Light returned to the world.
Susanoo was fined, shorn, and expelled. The myth is honored as the origin of kagura dance and of the shimenawa rope; at Takachiho in Miyazaki, Amanoiwato Shrine faces the cave across the Iwato River, and pilgrims' stacked stones fill the nearby grotto of Amano Yasukawara.
