Episode 37 – Sibling Rivalry – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 37 Show Notes

Source: Japanese (Shinto) Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’ll travel to ancient Japan. You’ll learn that your sibling rivalry could be a lot worse, that trickery is always the best solution, and that even the sun sometimes needs a good pout. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn why you should never let a pig run between your legs. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 37, “Sibling Rivalry”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
In Shinto, a Japanese religion dating back to the early 8th century, Amaterasu O-mikami, whose name roughly translates to “the great divinity illuminating heaven”, is a sun goddess and one of the most important deities in the cosmology. She is a sun goddess as well as the ruler of the High Celestial Plain, known as Takama no Hara, which is the home of kami, or Shinto spirits.
In the beginning, the first gods of creation, Kunitokotachi and Amenominakanushi summoned the male Izanagi and the female Izanami into existence and charged them with creating the whole of the universe. To aid them, the couple was given a jeweled spear named Ame-no-nuboko, or heavenly spear, which was magic. The two deities went to the bridge between heaven and earth known as Ame-no-ukihashi or the floating bridge of heaven, and churned the sea below with the spear. When drops of salty water fell off the spear as they lifted it again, Onogoroshima, or the self-forming island, was created, and yes, that’s definitely a cum metaphor. They drove the mountains out of the depth of the sea and into the sky to form the islands of Japan, then descended to the first island to make their home there.
The new world was peaceful and boring, so they desired to get closer to one another. By that, I mean that they wanted to engage in some divine, strictly marital hanky panky, which meant they first had to invent the marriage ritual. They built Ame-no-mihashira, or the pillar of heaven, and built Yahiro-dono, a large, eightfold palace, around it. Izanagi and Izanami circled the pillar in opposite directions, and when they met on the other side, Izanami was the first to say ‘what’s up’. Izanagi thought this was some bullshit (because fragile masculinity was a thing even then), but he decided not to let it ruin a perfectly good wedding and they went and fucked like bunnies that night. Gods are almost always insanely fertile, and Izanami was no exception. They had two children: Hiruko, the leech child, and Awashima, the faint island. They were born horribly deformed, so they are considered to be demons instead of deities.
They put the two monster children in a boat and sent them out to sea to perish (which they didn’t, but that’s not part of this story) and went to consult the elder gods about what had gone wrong. They were told that the male deity should have spoken first in the marriage ceremony (because patriarchy was a thing even then), so they redid the ceremony with Izanagi speaking first this time. They fucked again, got her pregnant again, and this time gave birth to healthy godlings, specifically the eight great islands of the ancient Japanese chain, followed by six more islands and many deities. Unfortunately, in the Shinto mythos, not even goddesses were immune to the dangers of childbirth, and Izanami died giving birth to Kagu-tsuchi (the incarnation of fire) and Ho-Musubi (the maker of fire). She was buried on Mt. Hiba, at the border between Holi and Izumo, near the modern day Yasugi of Shimane Prefecture. Izanagi was so enraged at the death of his beloved wife that he murdered the children who had killed their mother, creating dozens of lesser deities.
He wasn’t able to get over her loss, and so he soon decided to do something forbidden and went on a journey to Yomi, the shadowy land of the dead. He searched the barren plain for his wife and, wonder of wonders, he actually found her lurking in the shadows. He had trouble seeing her through the dark, clinging shade, but he knew it was her and he asked her to come back to the world of the living with him. She shook her head. “No, my love. You came too late. I have already eaten of the food of the underworld and now I cannot return. I am sorry, my love.” “There has to be a way!” “We could try asking for permission. It’s a long shot, though.” Let that be a lesson, dear listeners. If you find yourself in the underworld, don’t eat the food. It didn’t work for Persephone, it didn’t work for Izanami, and it won’t work for you.
Izanagi refused to leave without his beloved wife, and he had no faith that the lord of the dead would be friendly and understanding, so he decided to do something bold, impulsive, and stupid that mirrored another Greek myth. While Izanami-no-mikoto was sleeping, he took the comb that bound his long hair and set it alight with to make a torch. The light drove away the shadows that lurked everywhere in this dreary place, and let him see Izanami clearly for the first time since he’d arrived there. The once-gorgeous woman, so lovely and graceful, was now a foul, rotted horror. Her flesh had withered and decayed, twisting and bulging with the maggots that crawled beneath her skin, and foul creatures ran along her withered form.
Izanagi was shocked at the ravages done to his dead wife. He screamed in horror, then turned and ran away from the sight he could no longer bear. He fully intended to return to the land of the living and abandon his death-ridden wife to the ravages of the underworld. At his scream, however, the ghoul that had been his wife awoke and saw her husband fleeing. She shrieked in rage and betrayal and lurched to her feet to chase after him. As she ran, she summoned Yakusa-no-ikazuchi-no-kami, also known as Raijin or Raiden (yes, the same Raiden as in Mortal Kombat) and the shikome, the foul woman of the underworld, to chase him down and bring him back to her in Yomi. Chased by several undead nightmares, Izanagi reached the entrance and burst out into the living world. Heart racing, he shoved a massive boulder into the mouth of the Yomotsuhirasaka, the cavern that was the entrance to Yomi. On the other side, Izanami screamed from behind the barrier that she was not strong enough to move. “Fuck you, you son of a bitch! You said you loved me! You said you’d love me forever! This is how you leave me? If you abandon me here now, I will slaughter 1000 living souls every day!” “Yeah, well fuck you too! You aren’t my wife anymore, you’re the corpse that used to be her, and if you murder 1000 souls a day, I will create 1500 a day to replace them. You will not win, you horrid thing!”
Afterwards, he felt unclean from the stink of death, so he performed a cleansing ritual in the river Woto. Amaterasu was born from the gunk in his right eye, Tsuki-yomi was born from the gunk in his left, and Susanoo was born from the snot in his nose.
The radiance and beauty of Amaterasu literally lit up the world around her and brought endless joy to her father, so he decided to place her in the sky for all of the other lifeforms that had or would be created to enjoy. Tsuki-yomi, a peaceful and reserved child, much less bright than his sister, was made god of the moon; and Susanoo-no-Mikoto, a boy with a truly horrendous temper, prone to violence, rage, and wanton destruction, was made god of the seas and storms.
Like youngest siblings everywhere (and even more so storm gods), Susanoo was a horrible little brat who constantly got onto his eldest sister’s nerves and picked fights. Also like many younger siblings, he acted out because he felt ignored and unappreciated and negative attention was still attention. Unlike most youngest siblings, his pranks and hijinks resulted in wanton destruction on the earth. To get his sister’s attention, he released the wind and rain he held in his arms and sent his horses to destroy Amaterasu’s rice fields.
She tried to be patient with her baby brother, making excuses for him and saying that he couldn’t help his troublesome nature. Her patience and forbearance only made him more and more irritated, and Susanoo decided to go bigger. Finally, not even she could excuse his behavior anymore, and he was kicked out of heaven and banished to the underworld. He was held down and had his beard shaved, his fingernails and toenails removed, and was forced to endure several humiliating rituals of penance before being tossed out.
He thought this was completely unfair and that really, he hadn’t done anything all that bad, so he decided to get petty, childish revenge on his sister. Some versions of the story say that his fury was brought on by a competition with his sister issued by Susanoo after being told by his father Izanagi that he had to leave heaven: each would take an object of the other’s and use it to create new gods and goddesses. Whomever created the most would be the winner. Amaterasu birthed three women from Susanoo’s Totsuka-no-Tsurugi, or sword the length of ten fists, by biting the sword and breathing out while Susanoo created five men from Amaterasu’s necklace by swallowing the beads and spitting them back up. Amaterasu, in a fairly petty changing of the rules at the last second, declared that the five gods were hers since they had come from her necklace and made herself the winner. Susanoo declared that this was clearly bullshit and vowed revenge.
He climbed up on the clouds and threw a big lump of mud at Amaterasu, splattering all over her clean, radiant feet. She could handle a lot of things, but she prided herself on being clean and shiny (like any self-respecting sun deity), so this was a bridge too far.
This seems pretty petty for what transpires, which is why another version of the story says that something much worse happened instead. One day, Amaterasu was weaving peacefully on her loom when, pissed off at how much everyone loved and fawned over his sister, Susanoo killed the goddess’ prize mare, flayed its body, and tossed the ravaged corpse into the room with her like some horrifying precursor to the Godfather. He didn’t just dump it in the room, either, he hurled it in with enough force to shatter several of her looms and splatter blood and viscera over many of her completed works, ruining years of work. One of Amaterasu’s attendants saw him destroying the goddess’ art, and tried to stop him, so he slit her throat and waited for his sister. She walked in the room and stopped, stunned and horrified by the gore and death splattering the room, and Susanoo attacked her, screaming his rage over what he thought was his unfair treatment, because he was a fragile little man-baby. This seems like a much more reasonable precursor to Amaterasu’s reaction, so I’m going to go with the second one.
Either way, Susanoo went back to the underworld, thinking he had won the fight, but Amaterasu, righteously indignant, decided to hide herself away. She climbed down the ladder of heaven to the earth, found a nice large, clean cave high up in the mountains, and went inside. As she entered, she rolled a large boulder over the entrance to keep all of the other gods and goddesses out, and went deeper into the cave, known as Ama-no-Iwato, or the heavenly rock cave, to pout. His reaction was clearly a huge, horrifying, and vile overreaction, but Susanoo was clearly the legitimate winner of the competition. That doesn’t justify what he did, but his sister was clearly a sore loser. Meanwhile, in the world outside, the land descended into darkness without the sun and the land began to wither. As days went by without any light, demons began to crawl up to the earth’s surface, emboldened by the darkness, and the gods began to get worried.
She wasn’t hidden as well as she thought, so all of the gods went down to earth and gathered outside of the cave she had chosen as her hiding space. They talked to each other, and they put together the pieces of what had driven the sun goddess to hide away her light. Something clearly had to be done, and so the various deities tried to lure out the radiant, angry sun goddess: they tried begging, they tried bribing, they tried threatening. Nothing worked. Finally, Uzume, the goddess of laughter, was up. She decided to go a different way and tried being sneaky (which is always a good plan in mythology).
She had a large mirror brought up to the mountain cave and placed against a rock facing the cave entrance. Then, she hung a fortune in gold and jewels from the branches of the nearby trees, and cajoled all of the assembled deities to join her in dancing around, singing, and laughing loudly in an imaginary ritual. Amaterasu, alone and bored inside the dark cave, heard the sound of their revelry and was intrigued. “Hello? Can someone tell me what’s going on? Hello? I know you’re out there, I can hear you singing!” “Oh sorry about that,” replied Uzume. “We kind of forgot you were in there. We’re celebrating because we’ve found a newer, younger, and better looking goddess to be the sun! She’s much brighter than you ever were, and it’s nice to be able to enjoy the sunlight again. Anyway, we don’t really need you anymore, so you can feel free to just relax in your cave. We’ll leave once the party is over.”
Amaterasu didn’t like the sound of that at all. She’d been hiding herself away to try and recover from what had happened to her (and maybe to punish everyone for not taking her brother’s wickedness more seriously), but she hadn’t wanted to be replaced and she certainly hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly! “And who the hell could they possibly have found who would be a better sun goddess that I?” Her curiosity aroused, Amaterasu found that she simply had to roll the boulder out of the way enough for her to take a little peek.
The boulder rolled away much more easily from the inside (since she could actually get a purchase on it from here), and she rolled the stone away just far enough to poke her head out, wary of a trick. Across the forest, she saw the brilliant flash of a mesmerizingly beautiful woman near the center of the circled dancers, but it was hard to get a clear view from where she was. Unable to take her eyes off the distant figure, hypnotized by the light and the life happening around her, she stumbled out of the cave and towards the lovely figure…only to realize that the figure was herself. She was seeing her own reflection in the mirror that Uzume had set up, reflected and refracted through all of the hanging jewels to create a cascading rainbow of dancing light that flashed on the bodies and jewelry of the assembled dancers as they twirled.
Amaterasu realized she had been tricked, and turned to hurry back into the cave, safe in the knowledge that no one had replaced her, but while she had been distracted, some of the other gods had rolled the boulder back into place, closing off the cave. They had already shown that it was almost impossible to get the boulder back out again from the outside, so Amaterasu stopped dead in her tracks. She felt a tug on her sleeve. She turned to find Uzume, goddess of laughter, living up to her title. Her laugh was infectious, and soon, the grumpy goddess found herself carried away by the merriment of her friends and family, her misery forgotten.
Bathed in joy once more, Amaterasu shone her light over the earth once again, banishing the demons and disease that had crept over the surface in her absence and drawing forth life once again. The dark things of the underworld went back down where they belonged with the banished Susanoo, who was beginning to feel maybe just a little bit bad about overreacting (but not nearly as bad as he should have).
Descending back towards the underworld, he came to the province of Izumo, now known as Shimane. Thirsty, he went to the headwaters of the River Hi. Slaking his thirst, he stood, ready to leave, but a sound carried over the gentle susurration of the flowing water: weeping. Curious (and perhaps a little remorseful about his earlier bloodthirsty evil), he followed the sound to an old man, an old woman, and a young girl. The elderly couple was sobbing and hugging the girl.
“Heya, folks. What’s up? Why the waterworks? Something wrong?” The old man looked up, noticing Susanoo for the first time. “Oh, young man, I didn’t know you were there. I am Ashi-nadzuchi, a minor earth god. My wife here is Te-nadzuchi, and this is our daughter Kushi-nade-hima. She is our last remaining daughter, and I fear we shall lose her too! We once had eight daughters, each more beautiful than the last, but every year for the last seven years, an eight-headed serpent named Orochi has hunted us down and eaten one of our daughters. It is now almost exactly a year since we lost Kushi’s sister. There is no way for us to stop it. My beloved daughter is doomed, just like all of her sisters.” With that, the power of speech left him, and he was again overcome with sorrow and sobs.
Susanoo tilted his head, thinking. “I have an idea. Since you’re about to lose your daughter to a horrible bloody death anyway, how about you give her to me instead. I think I can protect her.” The old man was loathe to give up his only living daughter, but he knew it was his only shot. “Very well. Take her, great warrior!” “Awesome. Buck up, sweetie. This might hurt a little.” Without explaining further, Susanoo turned the young girl into a small, many-toothed comb which he stuck in his hair under his topknot.
“Okay, now it’s time for me to keep my end, but I’m going to need your help. Yeah, that wasn’t exactly the deal, but if you want your daughter to live, suck it up and help me.” Again, the old couple had no choice, so they agreed to follow his instructions. “Awesome. I like you two. Right, so what I need is for you to brew eight bottles of powerful sake. While it brews, make eight cupboards. In each one, place a tub filled with the sake and set them out here. Then, all you have to do is wait. I’d help, but I really need to be saving my strength, what with the saving your daughter and all.” The elderly couple sighed and got to work, a faint hope blooming in their chests.
It wasn’t long after everything was ready that a creaking and crashing could be heard in the distance over the rush of the river. The serpent was massive, with eight heads and eight tails forking from one massive body. It’s eyes were an angry red, like a winter cherry, and trees grew from it’s back, thin firs and cypresses rippling with every movement of its body. As it came near, its gargantuan body extended back over eight hills and eight valleys, and each of its nightmare heads darted about, teeth bared.
All eight heads sniffed. Sixteen eyes locked in on the cabinets with the tubs full of sake and each darted towards a different tub to drink deeply. It was a big snake, but that was a hell of a lot of sake, and so the snake soon became fucking wasted. The heads weaved unevenly, then all eight heads sank down to the ground and fell into a deep sleep. Susanoo drew his Totsuka-no-Tsurugi and chopped the passed out serpent into tiny bloody pieces. The story doesn’t say, but I assume he turned the girl human again and gave her back to her parents, but maybe he just decided she was the best comb he ever had and kept her. As he tried to chop up the tail though (the thing was long dead at this point, but Susanoo believed in doing a job thoroughly), he noticed something odd: his sword was getting notched by something inside the snake.
Curious, he sliced open the tail and dug into the bloody meat to find a gorgeous sword he named Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi (the Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds), although its name was later changed to Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (the Grass-Cutting Sword). He cleaned it up, finished hacking the serpent (some versions say Orochi was a dragon) to bits, and then went up to heaven to find his sister. He presented Amaterasu with the sword as an apology gift, which she generously accepted. According to legend, she would later bequeath the sword, along with the Yata no Kagami mirror and the Yasakani no Magatama jewel, to her descendent Ninigi, who would found the imperial house of Japan. The three sacred items would become the Imperial Regalia of Japan, representing valor (the sword), wisdom (the mirror), and benevolence (the jewel). Their location today is unclear, if they exist at all, but it is believed that the sword is at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, the jewel is at the Three Palace Sanctuaries in Kokyo (the imperial palace in Tokyo), and the mirror is at the Ise Grand Shrine in Mie Prefecture.
This story of the loss of the sun and its reemergence seemed appropriate for the new year and the beginning of winter, and besides, it’s rare that I’ve seen a female sun deity in mythology, so I was excited to tell this tale. I’ve always found it interesting how universal some of the mythological themes are. I could easily see this story taking place in the Norse cosmology, with Loki and Thor playing the primary roles here. And speaking of unusual characters, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the katakirauwa, or the one-eared pig.
I haven’t been able to find a lot of information about this weird, adorable, terrifying yokai, but it was too bizarre not to include. The story goes like this. Once, there was a young man in Kagoshima who had just gotten his very first office job. Upon receiving his first paycheck, he went out and partied, getting well and truly shit-faced. Once the bars closed, he stumbled home along the Nagata River, alone and still quite drunk. As he walked, he heard a squealing ahead of him and saw, to his surprise, a piglet with only one ear. At the same time, the little piglet saw the salaryman, squealed, and charged. The man froze, not sure what to do with an adorable little creature charging at him wildly, but all it did was run between his legs. As it turns out, he should have gotten out of the way because, as the piglet ran between his legs, it devoured his motherfucking soul.
You heard that right. These adorable little demon piglets (sometimes they are described as adult pigs, but usually they are still tiny and cute) eat the souls of the unsuspecting humans who aren’t quick enough to move out of the way of their wild charge. You can identify this pig ghost easily enough: they are usually black, they only have one ear, and they do not cast a shadow (because ghosts don’t have anything to cast a shadow with). They are said to haunt the rural parts of Japan, and the people there are pretty careful not to let any pigs run between their legs because you never know. I’m not sure if there is any moral to this tale, but I would have to guess that it’s something along the lines of ‘don’t assume something isn’t dangerous just because it’s cute.’
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll set sail for the cold shores of England. You’ll see that people have always been crazy about cats, that asshole neighbors are universal, and that you should never piss off the Devil. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll discover the ancient secret lurking under a two and a half millennia old fort. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.