Takeminakata- Japanese GodDeity"God of Wind and Water"

The Challenge

When Amaterasu dispatched Takemikazuchi to Izumo to demand Ōkuninushi's abdication, Ōkuninushi deferred to his sons. Kotoshironushi immediately consented. Takeminakata did not. He arrived carrying a massive boulder on his fingertips and challenged Takemikazuchi to wrestle.

When Takeminakata seized Takemikazuchi's arm, the heavenly god's limb transformed first into an icicle and then into a sword blade. Takeminakata could not hold on. Takemikazuchi then grasped Takeminakata's arm and crushed it like a reed stalk. Takeminakata fled across the land with Takemikazuchi in pursuit until he reached Lake Suwa in Shinano, where he was cornered. He pledged never to leave Suwa and not to oppose the rule of Ninigi's descendants.

Exile at Suwa

The pledge became a shrine. Suwa Taisha stands in four buildings divided between Upper and Lower Shrines on opposite shores of Lake Suwa, with Takeminakata enshrined at the Upper Shrine and his consort Yasakatome-no-Kami at the Lower.

Every six years, the Onbashira festival renews the shrine. Enormous fir logs are cut from the mountain forests, dragged down steep slopes by teams of men who ride the logs as they descend, and erected at the four corners of each shrine building. Men have died in the descent. No other Shinto festival resembles it.

In winter, ridges of ice form across Lake Suwa, cracking and buckling into pressure lines that run from shore to shore. This is the Omiwatari. Priests read it as Takeminakata crossing the frozen lake to visit Yasakatome at the Lower Shrine, and from its pattern they forecast the harvest.