Wakahirume- Japanese GodDeity"The Young Sun Maiden"

The Sacred Weaving Hall

Wakahirume, the Young Sun Maiden, was at work in the sacred weaving hall of Takamagahara, the imi-hataya, where the goddesses wove divine garments for the gods. Her name directly parallels Amaterasu's own. The Nihon Shoki names her; the Kojiki leaves the weaving maiden anonymous.

Susanoo's behavior in heaven had been escalating. He fouled the sacred rice paddies and defiled the festival halls. His final act shattered the peace of the weaving hall: he flayed a piebald horse backward, against the natural direction of the hide, and hurled the carcass through the roof. Wakahirume, startled, fell against her shuttle and was fatally wounded. The Nihon Shoki specifies that the shuttle struck her genitals.

The Darkness

Her death was the last outrage. Amaterasu sealed herself inside the rock cave of Ama-no-Iwato, and the world went dark. Without the sun goddess, the High Plain of Heaven and the Central Land of Reed Plains alike were swallowed in endless night. The eight hundred myriad gods gathered before the sealed cave and devised an elaborate stratagem to draw her out: Ame-no-Uzume performed an ecstatic dance that shook the assembled deities into uproarious laughter. When Amaterasu cracked the stone door to see what could cause such merriment in a world without light, Ame-no-Tajikarao seized her and hauled her back into the open. The sun returned.

The crisis that required the gods to trick their own sovereign back into the world began with a shuttle striking a weaving maiden's body in a hall where a horse had fallen through the roof. Wakahirume is venerated today at Ikuta Shrine in Kobe, one of the oldest shrines in Japan, where she is honored as a goddess of weaving and the domestic arts.