COLLECTION
Stories connected by a shared idea.
A courtier rode out with a red banner to fetch the thunder for his emperor, and caught it twice. Japan's oldest books are full of thunder and wind gods, but the pair with the ring of drums and the bag of wind came later, with Buddhist art from China.
Read story 10 min readIzanagi followed his dead wife into Yomi, the land of the dead, broke the one thing she asked of him and saw what she had become. He fled with her army behind him and sealed the pass with a boulder, and the words they spoke across it set how many people die and are born each day.
Read story 10 min readThrown out of heaven, Susanoo comes down by a river in Izumo, makes a serpent with eight heads drunk and cuts it to pieces. In its tail is the sword that became one of Japan's imperial regalia. Izumo's own record of its gods never mentions the serpent.
Read story 9 min readThe sun goddess shut herself in a cave and the world went dark, until the gods hung a mirror on a tree and a goddess danced on an upturned tub so wildly that heaven shook with laughter. Japan's two oldest books do not agree on why she hid, or on what brought her out.
Read story 9 min readJapan's oldest book does not begin with a king but with brine: two gods stir the sea with a jewelled spear, circle a pillar, get it wrong once, and give birth to the islands.
Read story 5 min read
