Deities
Uke Mochi
oo-keh MOH-chee
Also Known As Ukemochi
Japanese Deities
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Uke Mochi, whose name is read as the kami who holds food, is a Shinto goddess of food and grain whose death, in the Nihongi's telling, is the origin of humanity's staple crops. Sent by Amaterasu to visit her, the moon god Tsukuyomi is offered a feast Uke Mochi produces from her own body, food from the sea drawn from her mouth turned to the water, food from the land from her mouth turned to the hills; disgusted at being served food that had come from inside her, Tsukuyomi kills her on the spot. From her corpse a messenger sent by Amaterasu finds cattle and horses grown from her head, millet from her brow, silkworms from her eyebrows, rice from her belly and wheat and beans from her genitals, which Amaterasu then takes up as the first seeds of agriculture. Amaterasu's anger at the killing is given, in the same telling, as the reason she will no longer share the sky with Tsukuyomi, so that the sun and moon are separated into day and night from that point on.
History & Origin
The Nihongi account has crops and animals spring from Uke Mochi's corpse after Tsukuyomi kills her, rice from her eyes, silkworms from her eyebrows, millet from her ears and beans from elsewhere on her body, a death so disgraceful in her sister Amaterasu's eyes that the sun and moon were said to have separated to occupy day and night apart from that point onward.
Facts
Function
Domain / FunctionAgriculture and harvest 1 Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2 Belief
TheologyPolytheistic: many gods 1 Cult
Attributes and IconographyIn the Nihongi's account, crops and livestock grow from Uke Mochi's dead body: cattle and horses from her head, millet from her brow, silkworms from her eyebrows, rice from her belly, and wheat and beans from her genitals. 2 Worship and PracticeUke Mochi is honored at grain and harvest shrines across Japan, and her death myth, in which foodstuffs spring from her slain body, parallels the Hainuwele type myth found across other agricultural societies, a comparison folklorists use to situate her within a broader pattern of deities whose death generates the world's food. 2 History
Historical NoteThe Kojiki, compiled a few years before the Nihongi, preserves a closely parallel story in which the slain food goddess is instead named Ogetsuhime and it is Susanoo rather than Tsukuyomi who kills her, so the two earliest chronicles attach the same charter myth to different gods. 1 Sources
Textual NoteThe Nihongi recounts that when the moon god Tsukuyomi visited Uke Mochi and found she had produced a feast by disgorging food from her own body, he killed her in disgust, an act the text says caused the sun and moon to separate and never meet again. 2 Disputed
Point in DisputeSome scholars associate Uke Mochi with Toyouke Omikami, the grain and food goddess enshrined at the Outer Shrine, or Geku, of the Ise Grand Shrine complex, reading the two as versions of a single food deity. Others treat the identification as a later devotional overlay rather than an original textual equivalence, since the two are not named as the same figure in either the Kojiki or the Nihongi, and the connection rests on shared domain rather than on any explicit statement in the earliest sources. 1 Attributions
Mythic AssociationFrom Uke Mochi's corpse came cattle and horses, millet, silkworms, rice, wheat and beans, which Amaterasu took up as the first seeds of agriculture. 2 Mythic AssociationThe Nihongi recounts that Uke Mochi produced food from her mouth, nose and other bodily orifices to feed a visiting god, who was so disgusted by the manner of its production that he killed her, after which crops and animals sprang from her dead body. 2 Origins
Origin of the NameUke Mochi's name is read as the kami who holds or possesses food. 2 Position Profile
Key TextThe Nihongi recounts the moon god Tsukuyomi killing Uke Mochi in disgust after she produces a feast for him by facing the ocean, land and mountains and vomiting fish, game and rice respectively, and that from her slain body grain crops, silkworms and cattle then sprang, an origin myth explaining the beginnings of agriculture. 2 Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
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Same Figure, Narrative Entry
Worshipped In
Sources
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