Amaterasu and Susano'o

Alas, Susano’o would not rule his country, but spent all his time crying, weeping so hard that the forests on the mountains withered and died. Izanagi demanded to know why he was crying, and Susano’o replied that he wanted to go to his mother’s country. Izanagi was furious.

“In that case, get out and go to your mother!”

Susano’o left, but felt that he should bid his sister, Amaterasu-Omikami, farewell first, and climbed to Takamanohara, his footsteps shaking the mountains and rivers. Amaterasu-Omikami feared that he was coming to seize her land, so she armed and dressed herself as a man and went to meet him, planting her feet and blocking his path.

“Why have you come here?” she demanded.
“I have no ill intent!” Susano’o protested. “I simply came to bid you farewell.”
“How can you prove that?”
“Let us bear children to determine the truth,” Susano’o replied.

So Amaterasu-Omikami took Susano’o’s sword, folded it in three, and chewed it up. Three female kami were born from the mist she spit out.

Then Susano’o took Amaterasu-Omikami’s jewels, chewed them up, and spit out mist from which five male kami were born, of whom the eldest was Oshihomimi-no-Mikoto.

Amaterasu-Omikami said, “The male kami were born from my jewels, so they are my children, while the female kami are yours.”

Susano’o replied, “That proves that my heart is pure, as I gave birth to gentle women.”

And so Amaterasu-Omikami allowed him into Takamanohara, but Susano’o broke the dikes around her rice fields and defiled the sacred hall for venerating the kami with grain offerings. Even then, Amaterasu-Omikami defended him. But then he skinned a horse backwards and dropped the body through a hole in the roof of the sacred weaving hall. In her shock, the weaver stabbed herself with the shuttle and died.

At this, Amaterasu-Omikami could bear no more, and she hid herself in Ameno’iwayato, the Cave of the Heavens, closing herself within it.