Shinto goddess Ama-No-Uzume's Provocative Spring Fertility Dance

Amaterasu was weaving the gods’ clothes in her sacred chamber when her brother, the storm god Susano-O, made a circle in the roof and threw a dead flayed piebald horse into her circle of weaving women.

One of Amaterasu’s oldest friends fell dead at her feet. Horrified and worn out by her brother's recent tempests, she could only think of running away. She ran as far as she could to a rocky cave in a quiet corner of Heaven and blocked the entrance with a boulder. No more strife!

Without Amaterasu's light, the world was in darkness and the gods could not entice her out. Susa, in disgrace (some say in despair), began the long journey to the underworld alone, while Amaterasu sat for a very long time in the cave, brooding over recent events.

She began to feel that it was somehow all her fault. Perhaps she had failed her brother in some important way. Perhaps she lacked the ability to love. In her headlong flight to the cave, she had lost her ability to see clearly... her light was truly dimmed.

But the darkness within the cave was nothing compared to the darkness outside the cave. The people had lost their radiant mother and sat huddled in their homes, listless and hopeless. Without her light in the kingdom, they could not see their own strength and so had lost the will to go on. The world began to wither and die.

When things had begun to look blacker than the very night itself, the eight hundred myriad of gods gathered together in the dry bed of a river to decide how to get Amaterasu back. They turned to Hoard-thoughts, who always had good ideas, if only he could be persuaded to tell. Even he was worried now and so he advised the gods to collect cocks to crow just before dawn and hang a mirror with strands of jewels on the branches of the Sakaki tree at the entrance of Amaterasu’s cave. They did so, and then they decorated the tree with bright cloth banners and uttered ritual words.

Next, a sister-goddess, Ama no Uzume, stepped forward with an idea all her own. She stripped herself naked and carefully dressed in various plants and bamboo leaves. Climbing onto a tub turned upside down at the entrance of the cave, she danced. Such a dance! She drummed her feet on the tub and swung her hips, and carried away by divine ecstasy, Uzume exposed her yoni to her rapt audience.

All the eight hundred myriad of gods roared with laughter and approval, hooting and hollering. By the light of a thousand torches, the cocks began crowing loudly in unison.

Amaterasu, in her cave, was surprised. Even in her worst meetings with Susano-O, she had never before heard such a noise in her peaceable kingdom. What could she be missing? Finally, when she heard the laughter of the gods, she couldn’t resist peering outside the cave. Everyone sounded so happy without her!

The gods, who wanted to take no more chances with their mother goddess, had asked the god of Force to hide near the entrance to the cave and to seize Amaterasu’s hand and drag her all the way out when she appeared, but, as it turned out, Force really wasn’t necessary after all. Catching a glimpse of something in the mirror hanging in front of her, Amaterasu forgot her fear and pain and stood transfixed by a clear light.

She was seeing herself for the first time in a very long time, and it gave her a stronger determination to carry on her duties in heaven. She immediately returned to her palace and vowed never again to be so frightened by any storm. Mirrors were hung in the doorways to her temples, so that all who passed in or out might look deeply into it. The elders say that the people of Japan, and the gods themselves, carried on their lives with renewed courage and joy.