THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Amaterasu Omikami is the sun goddess of Japanese myth and ruler of Takamagahara, the Plain of High Heaven. According to the Kojiki she was born when the creator god Izanagi, purifying himself in a river in Hyuga after escaping the land of the dead, washed his left eye; the moon god Tsukuyomi and the storm god Susanoo emerged from his right eye and nose in the same rite, making up the three noble children.
Her defining episode is that of the Heavenly Rock Cave. When Susanoo wrecked her rice-field ridges, defiled her hall, and hurled a flayed piebald colt into her weaving house, killing a weaving maiden, Amaterasu shut herself inside Ame-no-Iwato and both heaven and earth went dark. The assembled gods lured her out with a great mirror, curved jewels, and the wild dance of Ame-no-Uzume. She later sent her grandson Ninigi down to earth bearing the mirror, sword, and jewel, the descent through which the eighth-century chronicles trace the imperial line back to her.
The Inner Shrine of Ise enshrines Amaterasu with the mirror Yata-no-Kagami as its sacred object, and its buildings are rebuilt every twenty years in the shikinen sengu rite, a practice still observed today.
