The Sun Goddess Who Hid in a Cave

Amaterasu's central myth, told in Japan's earliest chronicles, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, follows the aftermath of her brother Susanoo's rampage through heaven, in which he broke down the ridges between her rice paddies, defiled her sacred hall, and flung a flayed horse through the roof of the weaving hall where her attendant sat, an act that killed the maiden inside. In grief and outrage Amaterasu withdrew into the cave of Ame no Iwato and sealed its entrance with a boulder, and her absence plunged the whole world into permanent darkness, since she is herself the sun. The other gods gathered outside the cave and devised a plan to draw her out: they gathered long crowing birds and made them call out together before the cave, mimicking the arrival of dawn, then hung a sacred mirror and jewels on a tree before the entrance, and the goddess Ame no Uzume performed a wild, exposing dance atop an overturned tub that sent the assembled gods into uproarious laughter. Amaterasu, curious what could provoke such joy in a world she believed dark and joyless without her, opened the boulder slightly to look, saw her own radiant reflection in the mirror and, drawn further out by that sight, was pulled fully into the open, restoring light to the world.