Japanese Mythology's Original Texts 3: The Heavenly Descent & Jimmu

Thank you for visiting. This article is the third installment in a series explaining the original texts of Japanese mythology.

This time, following the text continuing from the end of the Kojiki upper volume (the heavenly descent) into the middle volume (the age of humans), we look in detail at how the descendants of the heavenly gods came down to earth, the first emperor was born, and the nation was founded.

For an overview map of Japanese mythology’s original texts as a whole, please see this summary article.

The Original Texts of Japanese Mythology — Kojiki, Nihon Shoki & Indexen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-japanese/

The Heavenly Descent — the Gods’ Descendants Come to Earth

The heavenly gods, who gained the earthly land through last time’s (Article 2) “transfer of the land,” at last decided to send their own descendants down to earth to govern it. This is the “heavenly descent (Tenson kōrin).”

The one commanded to descend was “Ninigi,” the grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu.

For his departure, Amaterasu grants Ninigi three treasures that may be called her own embodiment. These are the “Three Sacred Treasures (Sanshu no Jingi).”

These are all treasures that appeared in the earlier stories, and they form the basis for the Three Sacred Treasures being the proof that the imperial house is the legitimate descendant of the heavenly gods.

At this time, the Nihon Shoki records that Amaterasu told Ninigi, “The Land of Abundant Reed Plains is the land where my descendants should reign. Go and rule it. It will flourish forever, together with heaven and earth.” This is called the “Divine Decree of Heaven-and-Earth-Eternal (Tenjō mukyū),” and as a passage promising that rule by the emperor would continue forever together with heaven and earth, it would carry great meaning in later ages.

Also, Ninigi did not descend alone. He descended leading the gods who were active in the Ama-no-Iwato scene — the “Five Companion Gods (Itsutomo-no-o)”: Ame-no-Koyane (prayer), Futodama (ritual implements), Ame-no-Uzume (the dance), Ishikoridome (who made the mirror), and Tamanooya (who made the jewels). Each is taken to be the ancestor of a powerful clan that later handled ritual at court (the Nakatomi, Inbe, Sarume-no-kimi, etc.), showing well that the myth tells the origin of the actual clan system.

What this article traces is the genealogy by which the bloodline connects from the sun goddess Amaterasu to the first emperor. In a diagram, you can clearly see that the world of the gods (the age of gods) and the world of humans (the age of humans) connect into one line here.

During the descent, a mysterious god appears blocking the way, but this was the earthly god “Sarutahiko,” who offered to guide them. Leading many gods, with Sarutahiko’s guidance, Ninigi descended to the peak of “Takachiho” in Tsukushi.

An Anatomical Illustrated Guide to the Gods of JapanView on Amazon → A Handbook of Japanese Myths and GodsView on Amazon →

Konohanasakuyabime — the Origin of the Emperors’ Mortality

Having descended to earth, Ninigi meets the peerless beauty “Konohanasakuyabime” and proposes to her.

Her father-god rejoiced and married off her elder sister “Iwanagahime” together with her. But because Iwanagahime was not good-looking, Ninigi sent the elder sister back and took only the beautiful younger sister Konohanasakuyabime as his wife.

There was a deep reason for this. The father-god had offered the two with the wish that “if he takes Iwanagahime (rock), his descendants will have eternal life like rock; if he takes Konohanasakuyabime (flower), they will flourish like flowers.”

By sending the elder sister back, eternal life was lost, and the emperors’ (humans’) lifespan became fleeting and limited, like flowers. This is a myth explaining the origin of why the emperors, descendants of the gods, die.

Afterward, Konohanasakuyabime, who conceived in a single night, is suspected by Ninigi of infidelity. To prove her innocence, saying, “If they are children of a heavenly god, they will surely be born safely whatever happens,” she herself set fire to a birthing hut whose door she had plastered shut, and gave birth amid the blazing flames, safely bearing her children. That the children born were named Hoderi (Umisachi), Hosuseri, and Hoori (Yamasachi) — all named after “fire (ho)” — derives from this fire-birth.

Umisachi and Yamasachi

Among the children Konohanasakuyabime bore, the elder brother “Umisachi (luck of the sea)” and the younger brother “Yamasachi (luck of the mountains)” are the protagonists of the next story. The elder was skilled at fishing in the sea, the younger at hunting in the mountains.

One day, the two exchange tools. But Yamasachi loses his brother’s precious fishhook in the sea. The brother is enraged and, no matter how many replacement hooks are made, will not forgive, demanding the original hook back.

Before the despairing Yamasachi appears the salt god, who advises him to go to the palace of the sea god “Watatsumi.” At the sea god’s palace, Yamasachi is united with the sea god’s daughter “Toyotamabime” and spends three years.

Eventually, the sea god, who has learned the situation, gathers the fish and finds the hook in a sea bream that was suffering with it caught in its throat. Further, the sea god grants Yamasachi two jewels that control the ebb and flow of the tide, the “shiomitsu-tama (tide-flowing jewel) and shiofuru-tama (tide-ebbing jewel).”

Returning to earth, Yamasachi, with the power of these tide-jewels, drowns and rescues his brother — who would not stop his spite even after the hook was returned — and finally makes him submit. Thus the bloodline of the younger brother Yamasachi became the legitimate line that rules the earth.

Toyotamabime, who came to earth following him, says at the time of childbirth, “Never look at my form,” but Yamasachi again breaks the taboo and peers in. What was there was his wife giving birth, returned to the form of a shark (wani). Ashamed, Toyotamabime returns to the sea leaving the child on the shore, and closes the path between sea and land. This is also a myth telling that humans (the emperors’ ancestors) were cut off from the world of the sea god and became earthly beings.

The child left behind is raised by Toyotamabime’s younger sister “Tamayoribime,” sent to earth in the mother’s place, and on growing up, is united with that foster-mother Tamayoribime. Four children are born; their youngest is the later first emperor, Kamuyamato-Iwarebiko (Emperor Jimmu). This child’s name, “Ugayafukiaezu,” derives, the original text explains, from his being born “before the roof of the birthing hut was finished being thatched (= before it could be thatched with cormorant feathers).” Thus, through three generations from the heavenly descent, the stage was set for the first emperor to be born at last.

Jimmu’s Eastern Campaign — the Birth of the First Emperor

The child of Ugayafukiaezu is “Kamuyamato-Iwarebiko (Emperor Jimmu),” who later becomes the first emperor.

Thinking that the land of Hyūga (Miyazaki), the place of the heavenly descent, was too far west to govern the country, he resolved on an expedition east in search of better land, the “Eastern Campaign of Jimmu.” From here the story moves from the age of myth to the age of history under human emperors.

The party set out from Hyūga and advanced east through the Inland Sea, from Tsukushi (northern Kyushu) through Aki and Kibi (Okayama) to Naniwa (Osaka). The original text names the places along the route one by one, showing that the campaign is told along concrete geography.

But when they tried to invade Yamato (Nara), they met fierce resistance from the local chieftain “Nagasunebiko.” In this battle, Jimmu’s elder brother Itsuse-no-mikoto was struck by an arrow and lost his life. At this, Jimmu realized, “It is not good for me, a descendant of the sun god, to fight facing the sun (east). Let me fight with the sun at my back,” and pulled his army back once, taking a route that detoured far south around the Kii Peninsula to invade Yamato from Kumano.

In that Kumano, the army all collapsed, struck by the poisonous breath of a violent god, but a great sword bearing spiritual power, “Futsu-no-mitama,” was delivered from Takamagahara, and the army revived. Further, a giant three-legged crow sent by Amaterasu, the “Yatagarasu,” served as guide through the steep mountain roads and led the army to Yamato.

The last to stand in the way, Nagasunebiko, in fact served a god who had descended from heaven, “Nigihayahi.” Because that Nigihayahi recognized Jimmu as the legitimate heavenly grandchild, struck down Nagasunebiko, and submitted to Jimmu, Yamato was finally pacified. And so Emperor Jimmu was enthroned as the first emperor at Kashihara. By tradition, this is taken to be an event of 660 BC, and it became Japan’s founding myth.

Yamato Takeru — the Tragic Hero

When the Kojiki enters the middle volume, it becomes the stories of successive emperors. Among them, the greatest hero who retains a strongly mythic coloring is “Yamato Takeru,” the prince of the 12th emperor, Keikō.

The trigger that made Yamato Takeru feared by his father was shocking. Commanded by his father Emperor Keikō, “Your elder brother does not come to meals; admonish him well,” Yamato Takeru (childhood name Ōusu) seized his brother Ōusu, tore off his limbs, wrapped him in a mat, and threw him away. Fearing his all-too-violent temperament, the father thereafter sent this prince off on one dangerous expedition after another without rest. This is also the shadow running through the whole story — the tragedy of a hero perpetually shunned by his father.

First, in Kyushu, the still-boyish Yamato Takeru let down his hair, disguised himself as a girl, slipped into the enemy’s feast, and slew the off-guard “Kumaso Takeru” brothers. At this time, the chief being slain said, “There is no one as strong as you; I give you my name,” and the prince, until then called Ōusu, here received the name “Yamato Takeru.”

Next, commanded without rest to pacify the eastern lands, he stopped on the way at the home of his aunt “Yamatohime,” who served at the Ise Shrine. To the nephew lamenting his being shunned by his father, Yamatohime granted the divine sword “Kusanagi” and a bag, saying, “Open it in an emergency.” Indeed, in Suruga, Yamato Takeru met an enemy fire attack. He mowed down the surrounding grass with the sword he had been given, opened the bag, found a fire-striker, and set a counter-fire, narrowly escaping with his life. That the sword Susanoo obtained from Yamata-no-Orochi is called the “Kusanagi (grass-mowing) sword,” the original text says, derives from this event.

But his return journey was tragic. When the sea grew rough and the ship could not advance, his consort “Ototachibanahime” threw herself into the water as a sacrifice to the raging sea god, saving her husband’s voyage.

Further, Yamato Takeru, in his carelessness trying to defeat the violent god of Mount Ibuki bare-handed, was struck by the freezing rain the god sent and fell gravely ill. It is also told that having left the all-important Kusanagi sword with his wife Miyazuhime proved fatal.

Heading for his home of Yamato, on the road as his strength failed, Yamato Takeru composed a poem of longing for home: “Yamato wa / kuni no mahoroba / tatanazuku / aogaki / yamagomoreru / Yamato shi uruwashi” (Yamato is the finest of all lands. Those layered, blue fence-like mountains — Yamato, ringed by those mountains, is truly beautiful). This “song of longing for the homeland” is known as a fine poem conveying the heart of ancient Japan.

And Yamato Takeru breathed his last at the place of Nobono, never reaching his home. His soul became a single white plover (a swan) and flew up to heaven, and though the people chased it, it flew away across the sea. This prince, who kept fighting for the nation while shunned by his father and fell with longing for home in his heart, is still deeply loved as the representative tragic hero of Japanese mythology.

The Stories of the Age of Humans — the Kojiki Middle and Lower Volumes

The story of Yamato Takeru is contained in the middle volume of the Kojiki. Looking back again at the structure of the whole original text, its place becomes clear.

The middle volume contains, besides Jimmu’s eastern campaign and Yamato Takeru, the tragedy of Sahobime (an empress torn between her brother and her husband) and the story of Empress Jingū. In the lower volume the mythic coloring fades, but there are still memorable episodes. For example, the anecdote of the 16th emperor Nintoku and the “people’s hearths.” Seeing from a height that no cooking smoke rose from the people’s houses, the emperor sensed, “The people are poor,” exempted all taxes for three years, and himself endured in a palace with a leaking roof. When the houses eventually filled with smoke, the emperor rejoiced, “That the people are prosperous is the same as my being prosperous.” This story, telling the ideal of virtuous rule, shows that the Kojiki was not a mere myth collection but also a book conveying the proper image of an emperor.

To Learn More

Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.

The Nihon Shoki: Full Modern Translation + Commentary, Vol. 1, Age of GodsView on Amazon → The Easiest-to-Understand Japanese MythologyView on Amazon →

Conclusion

In this article, based on the Kojiki, I explained in detail from the heavenly descent through the founding by the first emperor to the hero Yamato Takeru. How was it?

Through Amaterasu’s grandson Ninigi’s “heavenly descent” and the Three Sacred Treasures, Konohanasakuyabime who became the origin of mortality, “Umisachi and Yamasachi” over the fishhook, and “Jimmu’s eastern campaign” led by the Yatagarasu, I hope you could feel the great flow of the Kojiki, in which the bloodline of the heavenly gods connects to the earthly imperial house.

So far, in Articles 1–3, we have traced the myths conveyed by the original text the Kojiki. In the next article (Article 4), turning to the other original text, the Nihon Shoki, I will explain how the “official history” records the same myths, and what variant traditions (the “one book”) it conveys alongside them.

For the big picture of Japanese mythology’s original texts and links to the other articles, please see the summary article below.

The Original Texts of Japanese Mythology — Kojiki, Nihon Shoki & Indexen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-japanese/

For the strength of the gods and heroes of Japanese mythology, please use this ranking article as a reference too.

Mythology & Religion: TOP 100 Gods, Monsters & Heroesen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-legends-ranking-1/

I hope you’ll read the next article too.