Ame-no-Koyane- Japanese GodDeity"Ancestor of the Nakatomi Clan"

The Heavenly Rock Cave

Amaterasu sealed herself inside the Heavenly Rock Cave and the world went dark. No sun rose. The eight hundred myriad gods gathered outside the cave to devise a plan, and among them Ame-no-Koyane was given one task: speak the words that would make the ritual holy.

He chanted the norito, the solemn liturgical invocations addressed to the kami, while beside him Futodama held aloft decorated sakaki branches hung with jewels and mirrors. The two worked as paired halves of the rite: Koyane providing the sacred words, Futodama furnishing the material offerings. When Ame-no-Uzume danced and the gods roared with laughter, Amaterasu cracked the cave open to look. Koyane's prayers had sanctified the ground she stepped back onto. The Kojiki records this as the first norito ever performed.

The Heavenly Descent

Amaterasu appointed Ame-no-Koyane as one of five deities to accompany her grandson Ninigi on his descent to rule the terrestrial realm. Paired once more with Futodama, Koyane was entrusted with conducting liturgical prayer in service to the imperial line. His descendants, the Nakatomi clan, inherited the duty of performing norito at court ceremonies and shrine festivals.

At Kasuga in Nara, where the Nakatomi's branch family the Fujiwara established their tutelary shrine in 768 CE, the founding legend says Ame-no-Koyane arrived riding a white deer from Kashima. Sacred deer have been protected on the shrine grounds ever since.

The Rival Account

In 807 CE, Imbe no Hironari wrote the Kogoshūi to lodge a complaint. The Nakatomi had risen so high through the Fujiwara that the Imbe, descendants of Futodama, had been shut out of their rightful ritual duties. Hironari's text argues that both prayer and offering were equally mandated at the Rock Cave. Koyane chanted and Futodama presented the offerings. Neither role was lesser. The Kogoshūi preserves what the Nakatomi's ascendancy had obscured: that the original rite required two voices, not one.