Takamagahara

Summary

Takamagahara, "the high plain of heaven", is where the kami come into being and live in the Kojiki, compiled in 712, and from it what lies below is governed. The book opens with it: when heaven and earth first became active, there came into being in Takamagahara a deity named Ame-no-minakanushi, "Master of the Centre of Heaven", then Takamimusuhi, then Kamimusuhi; each came alone, without a partner, and then hid their bodies. From this plain all the heavenly deities commanded Izanagi and Izanami to make the drifting land firm, and they stood on the Floating Bridge of Heaven and stirred the sea with a spear, and the drops falling from its tip became an island.

When Izanagi came back from the land of the dead and washed, Amaterasu was born from his left eye; he took off his necklace, gave it to her and said: rule Takamagahara. Her brother Susanoo came up to her and the mountains and rivers shook, and she said: my brother comes only to take my land from me; she bound up her hair, slung on two quivers, stamped the ground until she sank into it to the thighs, and stood waiting like a warrior. They made a pledge by the Tranquil River of Heaven: she broke his sword and chewed it, and three goddesses were born; he chewed her jewels, and five gods were born; she declared the three goddesses his daughters and the five gods her sons.

Then Susanoo ran riot in the plain: he broke down the divisions of the rice fields his sister had planted, filled in their channels, fouled the hall where she ate the first fruits of the harvest, and threw a flayed horse into the weaving hall. Amaterasu went into the Heavenly Rock Cave and shut its door, and all Takamagahara went dark, and with it the Central Land of Reed Plains below. The eight hundred myriad deities assembled in the bed of the Tranquil River of Heaven and asked Omoikane, the deity who thinks, to devise a plan. They gathered the long-singing birds of the night to crow, took stones from the river bed and iron from the Heavenly Metal Mountains, called in the smith Amatsumara, had a mirror and a string of jewels made, divined with the shoulder blade of a stag from the Heavenly Mount Kagu, and hung the mirror, the jewels and offerings on a tree they uprooted from the same mountain. Uzume danced on a board before the cave, Takamagahara shook and all the deities laughed, Amaterasu opened the door a little to see what made them laugh, and she was drawn out and the light came back. Then they fined Susanoo a thousand tables of offerings, cut his beard, pulled out his nails and expelled him.

At last Amaterasu and Takamimusuhi commanded her grandson Ninigi to go down and rule the land. He left his heavenly rock seat, pushed through the eightfold clouds, stood on the Floating Bridge of Heaven and came down on the peak of Takachiho, where he built a palace whose pillars rested on the rock at the bottom of the earth and whose crossbeams rose to Takamagahara.

The idea these accounts turn on is that Takamagahara is a land like the land below it. It has rice fields with divisions and channels, a weaving hall, a hall for the first fruits, a river with a stony bed where the deities meet in council, a smith, and a mountain called Kagu with stags and trees, which is the name of a well-known mountain in Yamato. Amaterasu calls it "my land". What is done in it reaches what lies below: when its fields were spoiled and its sun hid, the Central Land went dark with it, and from it the line of rulers came down to the land. It is the picture of an ordered land as it should be, and the land below is ruled from it.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read it. The Kojiki writes the name 高天原, Takama-no-hara, and adds a gloss telling the reader to read the graph for heaven here as ama, so the name is taka, "high", then ama-no-hara, "plain of heaven", which in the Man'yōshū is a name for the sky itself. We read ama as Arabic al-ʿamāʾ: in Lane ʿamāʾ is clouds, or lofty clouds, or clouds resembling smoke above the tops of mountains, or raining clouds, and a tradition tells that someone asked, "Where was our Lord before He created His creatures?" and was answered, "He was in ʿamāʾ." The ʿayn drops at the start of the word, as the Juthoor table says. The Old Japanese word ama means both heaven and rain, and Lane's ʿamāʾ is both the lofty cloud and the raining cloud. Hara was para in Old Japanese, "field, plain", which we read as Arabic barr: in Lane barr is a wide tract of land, the open country as opposed to the sea, elevated ground open to view; p is a lip sound like b. Taka, "high", is the weakest part, and we read it as ṭāq, an arched building, a vault. On this reading Takamagahara is the barr of the ʿamāʾ, a wide open land among the lofty clouds, which is what the story makes it: a land with fields, a river and a mountain, above the eightfold clouds that Ninigi pushes through when he comes down.

Linguistic Root

How the name divides

The Kokugakuin commentators note that the Kojiki adds a gloss telling the reader to read the graph for heaven in this name as ama, not ame, the form the word takes inside a compound; so the name is not "high heaven" plus "plain" but "high" plus "plain of heaven". They note that ama-no-hara appears in the Man'yōshū meaning the sky, as in "when I lift my eyes to the plain of heaven", and that the compilers added "high" to make it the deities' realm from which what lies below heaven is ruled. They also note that the Nihon Shoki does not use the name in its main text, which says simply "heaven", and has it only in some of its variant accounts; that the name arose with the form of the myths found in the Kojiki; and that it was probably coined in the reign of Empress Jitō, between 686 and 697, since her posthumous name contains it.

ʿAmāʾ, barr and ṭāq

Lane gathers in ʿamāʾ what Japanese gathers in ama: clouds, lofty clouds, clouds like smoke above the mountain tops, raining clouds, and a dense covering cloud. The corpus of Old Japanese gives ame and ama as one word meaning both heaven and rain. In the tradition Lane quotes, the Throne was "in ʿamāʾ, beneath which was a vacuity and above which was a vacuity", a place before creation, as Takamagahara in the Kojiki is where the deities come into being when heaven and earth begin. The project's Japanese Semitic essay reads the name Amaterasu as amṭara, "sent down rain", and the same syllables ama open her name, so the two readings meet in the rain that comes down from the sky.

In Lane barr is a wide tract of land, the open country as opposed to the sea, elevated ground open to view, and the outside as opposed to shelter. The corpus of Old Japanese gives para as field and plain. But Japanese calls the sea a plain too, Susanoo being given "the sea plain", while Arabic makes barr the opposite of the sea, so the Japanese sense is wider. Lane gives ṭāq as an arched construction, an arch of a building, and says it is said to be a Persian word arabicized; and Japanese taka means high, not arch, so this is the weakest part of the reading.

Key Mythic Narratives

Mount Kagu in heaven and on earth

In the cave story the deities take the shoulder blade of a stag, cherry bark and a tree with five hundred branches from "the Heavenly Mount Kagu", and Yamato has a well-known mountain of that name. Chamberlain notes that Motoori, the great commentator on the Kojiki, would not identify the heavenly mountain with the mountain in Yamato, while he himself sees no ground for the distinction. So heaven in this story has a mountain that bears the name of a mountain on earth.

The three goddesses from the sword

The three goddesses born from Susanoo's sword by the River of Heaven are worshipped in the three shrines of Munakata, and the Kojiki says the lords of Munakata revere them. They are also the three goddesses of the shrine on the island of Enoshima, whose goddesses were taken as Benzaiten when Buddhism and the kami cult were joined, so that it became a shrine of Benzaiten. Kojiki, section 14, Nipponica encyclopedia, Enoshima Shrine.

Takamimusuhi

The Kokugakuin commentators note that Takamimusuhi, the second of the first three deities, commands in Takamagahara together with Amaterasu: the two send the deities down to subdue the land, and then send Ninigi.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Japanese myths reads Amaterasu's hiding in the cave as a solar eclipse or the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the deities' dance before the cave as rites to bring the sun back; and it reads the story politically: Amaterasu is the ancestress of the emperors, so her absence is the absence of authority and her coming out the return of order. That is its reading of the cave story.

The text itself supports the second side of that reading: the plain from which her descendants rule the land is built in the image of a farming land with fields, channels and a weaving hall, its deities meet and take counsel, and the ruler comes down from it with the mirror, the jewels and the sword.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the North the gods build Asgard, with a council place from which they rule and a smithy where they work gold, and from it the bridge Bifröst runs down to earth. Takamagahara has fields, a weaving hall and a smith, its deities meet in the river bed, and the Floating Bridge of Heaven is the road to the land, on which Izanagi and Izanami stood and then Ninigi.

In China there is Mount Kunlun, which the Shanhaijing calls the lower capital of the Supreme Ruler and the Huainanzi makes a series of tiers climbing from earth to heaven. Kunlun is a dwelling of heaven on earth; Takamagahara is a land in heaven with a mountain that bears the name of a mountain in Yamato.

Mount Olympus among the Greeks and Mount Meru in India are forms of the sacred mountain, and the eight hundred myriad deities meeting in the river bed to take counsel is a form of the divine council.