Tagorihime- Japanese GodDeity"Munakata Goddess"
Also known as: 多紀理毘売命, Tagirihime, Tagorihime-no-Mikoto, Takiribime, 田心姫命, Okitsushimahime, and 奥津島比売命
Description
Born from the mist Amaterasu blew after chewing Susanoo's broken sword, Tagorihime is the eldest of the three Munakata goddesses. She was enshrined on Okinoshima, a forbidden island sixty kilometers out in the Genkai Sea, where sailors left offerings for centuries before crossing to the continent.
Mythology & Lore
The Oath-Ritual
When Susanoo climbed to heaven, Amaterasu armed herself and challenged him to prove his intentions were peaceful. He proposed an ukei, an oath-ritual that would settle the matter. Amaterasu took his sword, broke it into three pieces, chewed the fragments, and blew. From the mist of her breath, three goddesses appeared. The Kojiki names Tagorihime as the first-born, followed by Ichikishimahime and Tagitsuhime. Together they are the Munakata Sanjoshin, the Three Goddesses of Munakata. Amaterasu claimed them as her own children, born from Susanoo's sword but shaped by her breath.
As the eldest, Tagorihime received the most remote enshrinement: Okitsu-miya, on the island of Okinoshima, the farthest point along the sea route between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
Okinoshima
Okinoshima sits sixty kilometers from the Kyūshū mainland in the Genkai Sea. For centuries it was forbidden ground. Women could not set foot on the island. Men who landed were required to strip and immerse themselves in the sea before stepping ashore. Nothing could be taken from the island. Everything left there stayed.
What stayed was extraordinary. Archaeological surveys uncovered roughly eighty thousand votive objects deposited between the fourth and ninth centuries: bronze mirrors and gold rings left by sailors seeking safe passage to the continent. The offerings document centuries of worship directed at Tagorihime's shrine, left by hands that needed the sea to be kind. The earliest rituals took place on open mountaintop altars. Over time, worship moved to sheltered rock formations, then to formal shrine structures. The objects remain on the island where they were placed. Tagorihime's shrine on Okinoshima is still the least accessible of the three Munakata sites, and access is still restricted.