Ame-no-Uzume

Summary

Ame-no-Uzume is a woman among the heavenly kami of Japanese myth who danced before the cave where Amaterasu, the sun goddess, had hidden, until all the kami laughed, the sun looked out and light returned. Later she faced Sarutahiko at the crossroads of heaven and came down to earth with Ninigi, and she is the ancestress of the Sarume, the women who danced at the rites.

When Susanoo wrecked his sister's fields and weaving hall, Amaterasu went into the rock cave and shut it, and the plain of heaven and the land went dark. The kami gathered, made the mirror and the jewels and hung them on a sakaki tree. Uzume bound clubmoss from Mount Kagu about her as a sash, made a head-dress of spindle-tree leaves, held a posy of bamboo-grass leaves in her hands, set a hollow board before the cave door and stamped on it until it resounded, as if a kami had come upon her; she bared her breasts and pushed her skirt-band down to her private parts. The plain of heaven shook and the eight hundred myriad kami laughed together. Amaterasu, amazed, opened the door a little and said: I thought heaven and earth would be dark in my absence; why does Uzume make merry and all the kami laugh? Uzume said: we rejoice because there is a kami here greater than you. As she spoke the mirror was brought before Amaterasu; she came out a little to look, Ame-no-Tajikara took her hand and drew her out, the rope was stretched behind her, and light returned.

When Ninigi was about to descend, a kami stood at the eight crossroads of heaven, shining above and below. Amaterasu and Takagi told her: you are a delicate woman, but you are the kami who prevails over whoever faces her; go and ask him. The Nihon shoki says that none of the eighty myriad kami could face him, so Uzume bared her breast, pushed her band below her navel and stood before him laughing in mockery. He asked her: why do you do this? She said: who are you that stand in the road of Amaterasu's child? He said: I am Sarutahiko, come to go before him. After the descent she went with him to the river Isuzu in Ise and was told to bear his name, and so her line was called the Sarume.

On her return she gathered all the fish of the sea, broad-finned and narrow-finned, and asked them: will you serve the son of the heavenly kami? All said yes except the sea cucumber, which said nothing. She said: this is a mouth that does not answer, and slit its mouth with her small knife, so that its mouth is slit to this day; for that reason the Sarume are given a share of the first-fruits of Shima when they are offered to the emperor.

The idea the story turns on is that Uzume opens what has been shut, with laughter, with her face and with words, not with weapons. The cave door was shut, and the gathering's laughter opened it; Tajikara's hand only finished what she began. Heaven's road was blocked by a kami none could face; she faced and questioned him, and he became a guide. The sea cucumber's mouth was shut, and she slit it. What she did at the cave was also a trick: she told the sun that someone greater was there, and then showed her her own face in the mirror.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay reads it. The Kojiki writes it 天宇受売命, Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto. We remove Ame-no, "of heaven", no Mikoto, the title, and me, "woman". What remains is uzu. We read it from Arabic ʿazza: the ʿ drops because Japanese has no ʿ, the z stays, and the doubling goes. Lane gives "ʿazzahu: he overcame him, conquered him; overcame him in argument", and the Qur'an has ʿazzanī fī l-khiṭāb, "he overcame me in speech", and a proverb says man ʿazza bazza, "who overcomes takes the spoil". On this reading Uzume is the woman who prevails, which is what Amaterasu says of her: you are the kami who prevails over whoever faces her. An old Japanese explanation in the Kogo shūi agrees with it, saying that her name in the old pronunciation was Ame-no-osume, that she was so called because she was strong and fierce, and that people call a strong woman osushi.

Linguistic Root

The Kojiki writes uzu with two phonetic signs; the Nihon shoki writes it with 鈿, a head ornament of gold or silver. So Moribe read the name "she of the head-dress", from the head-dress of spindle-tree leaves she wore, and some scholars take it as the name of a priestess wearing the hair ornament in which a kami comes to rest. Chamberlain renders it "Alarming Female", following most commentators. The Kogo shūi says the old pronunciation was Ame-no-osume and that it comes from strength and fierceness.

Lane gives, under ʿ-z-z: "ʿazzahu: he overcame him, conquered him; overcame him in argumentative contest", "ʿazzahu fī l-khiṭāb: he became stronger than he therein, or strove with him to overcome", "ʿāzzahu: he strove with him to overcome", and the proverb man ʿazza bazza, "he who overcomes takes the spoil". The sound match runs like this: the ʿ drops, as most ʿ do in the Juthoor correspondences and as it did from raʿd in the reading of Raijin; z is the z of uzu; and the u of ʿuzz answers the two u-vowels of the name. The reading meets the Kogo shūi gloss in sense, and Amaterasu's words to her in the story. What remains against it is that the old Kogo shūi form osu has o and s, and that the head-dress reading takes another sense from the graph 鈿.

Key Mythic Narratives

The main text of the Nihon shoki tells the dance another way: Uzume took a spear wreathed with eulalia grass, stood before the cave door and performed a mimic dance; she made a head-dress of sakaki, made braces of clubmoss, kindled fires, set a tub upside down and gave a divinely inspired utterance. Amaterasu said: how can Uzume be so merry? Aston notes that this dance is said to be the origin of kagura, the dance performed at Shinto festivals.

Aston says that the Sarume were originally women who performed comic dances in honour of the kami, taking part with the Nakatomi and Imbe in the festival of first-fruits and other rites, and that these dances were the origin of kagura and of Nō. The Kokugakuin database notes that the Sarume sang and danced at the rite of pacifying the soul and walked before the procession of the enthronement festival. Sarutahiko's own end is told after: fishing at Azaka, his hand was caught by a shellfish and he drowned, and he was named for each stage of his drowning: the spirit that touches the bottom, the spirit around which the water gurgles, the spirit at which the bubbles burst.

Symbolic Reading

The Japanese essay in this project reads the kami's dance before the cave as a rite of the shortest days of the year, performed to bring back the sun: Amaterasu's withdrawal is the long winter, the mirror set before the cave an instrument for observing the sun's angle, and her coming out little by little the lengthening of the days after the solstice. On this reading Uzume is the one who leads the rite. The Kokugakuin database notes that scholars read her exposure and the gathering's laughter as reviving nature through laughter, or as a rite of returning the soul to the body, and agree that in the story she is the leader of the rite of the sun's return.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Egyptian Contendings of Horus and Seth, Ra is insulted in the council of the gods and goes to his pavilion and lies down, sore at heart and alone; Hathor comes, stands before him and uncovers her nakedness, and he laughs, rises and returns to judgment. In the Hymn to Demeter, Demeter, grieving for her daughter, sits without smiling, eating or drinking, until Iambe moves her with quips and jests to smile and laugh and cheer her heart. In all three stories a great divinity has withdrawn in grief or anger and a woman brings it back with laughter, in two of them by baring her body. The Japanese story differs in that the one who withdraws is the sun herself, and her return is the return of light to the whole world.

Her telling Amaterasu that someone greater was there, and then bringing the mirror before her, is a trick of the trickster's kind, and her dance before the cave is the first picture of matsuri.