is the

goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes ...

dawn Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's ...

, mirth, meditation, revelry and the arts in the

Shinto Shinto () is a religion from Japan. Classified as an East Asian religion by scholars of religion, its practitioners often regard it as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Scholars sometimes call its practitioners ''Shint ...

religion of

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, and the wife of fellow-god

Sarutahiko Ōkami Sarutahiko Ōkami ( ja, 猿田毘古大神, 猿田彦大神) is a deity of the Japanese religion of Shinto; he is the leader of the earthly '' kami''. Norito also mentions him with the title instead of . Sarutahiko Ōkami was the head of the ...

. She famously relates to the tale of the missing sun deity,

Amaterasu Omikami Amaterasu, also known as Amaterasu Ōmikami () or Ōhirume no Muchi no Kami (), is the goddess of the sun in Japanese mythology. One of the major deities (''kami'') of Shinto, she is also portrayed in Japan's earliest literary texts, the '' Koji ...

. Her name can also be pronounced as Ama-no-Uzume. She is also known as Ōmiyanome-no-Ōkami, an '' inari

kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the sp ...

'' possibly due to her relationship with her husband. She is also known as Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, The Great Persuader, and The Heavenly Alarming Female. She is depicted in kyōgen farce as Okame, a woman who revels in her sensuality.

Mythology

Amaterasu and the cave

Amaterasu's brother, the storm god

Susano'o __FORCETOC__ Susanoo (; historical orthography: , ) is a in Japanese mythology. The younger brother of Amaterasu, goddess of the sun and mythical ancestress of the Japanese imperial line, he is a multifaceted deity with contradictory charact ...

, had vandalized her rice fields, threw a flayed horse at her loom, and brutally killed one of her maidens due to a quarrel between them. In turn, Amaterasu became furious with him and retreated into the Heavenly Rock Cave, Amano-Iwato. The world, without the illumination of the sun, became dark and the gods could not lure Amaterasu out of her hiding place. Uzume dancing

The clever Uzume overturned a tub near the cave entrance and began to dance on it, tearing off her clothing in front of the other deities. They considered this so comical that they laughed heartily at the sight. This dance is said to have founded the Japanese ritual dance,

Kagura is a type of Shinto ritual ceremonial dance. The term is a contraction of the phrase , indicating the presence of gods () in the practice. One major function of is , involving a procession-trance process. Usually a female shaman will perfor ...

. Uzume had hung a bronze mirror and a beautiful jewel of polished jade. Amaterasu heard them, and peered out to see what the commotion was about. When she opened the cave, she saw the jewel and her glorious reflection in a mirror which Uzume had placed on a tree, and slowly came out from her clever hiding spot. At that moment, the god Ame-no-Tajikarawo-no-mikoto dashed forth and closed the cave behind her, refusing to budge so that she could no longer retreat. Another god tied a magic

shimenawa are lengths of laid rice straw or hemp rope used for ritual purification in the Shinto religion. vary in diameter from a few centimetres to several metres, and are often seen festooned with —traditional paper streamers. A space bound by t ...

across the entrance. The deities Ame-no-Koyane-no-mikoto and Ame-no-Futodama-no-mikoto then asked Amaterasu to rejoin the divine. She agreed, and light was restored to the earth.

Uzume and Sarutahiko

Amaterasu orders Uzume to accompany her grandson

Ninigi is a deity in Japanese mythology. Grandson of the sun goddess Amaterasu, Ninigi is regarded according to Japanese mythology as the great-grandfather of Japan’s first emperor, Emperor Jimmu. The three sacred treasures brought with Ninigi from ...

on his journey to earth. They head to ''

Ame-no-ukihashi Ame-no-ukihashi (天浮橋, 天の浮橋; English: ''Floating Bridge of Heaven'') is the bridge that connects the heaven and the earth in Japanese mythology. In the story of the creation of the Japanese archipelago, narrated in the ''Kojiki'' and ...

'' ("floating bridge of heaven") so they could head to earth but they are blocked by Sarutahiko. Uzume comes and persuades Sarutahiko to let Ninigi pass, in other versions of the story Uzume flirts with Sarutahiko. Later on, Uzume and Sarutahiko and fell in love and get married, they would both found the Sarume clan.

Worship

Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto is still worshiped today as a

, spirits indigenous to Japan. There are many shrines dedicated to the goddess including

Chiyo shrine Chiyo is a feminine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: * Chiyo Aizawa, Japanese murderer of father who sexually abused her since childhood * Chiyo Okumura, Japanese singer * Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo), a Japanese poet ...

, Tsubaki America Shrine and

Tsubaki Grand Shrine is a Shinto shrine in the Yamamoto neighborhood of the city of Suzuka in Mie Prefecture, Japan. It is one of the two shrines which claim the title of ''ichinomiya'' of former Ise Province. The main festival of the shrine is held annually o ...

Similarities with Vedic religion

According to

Michael Witzel Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–80). Witz ...

, Uzume is most closely related to the

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute th ...

goddess Ushas (''uṣás''), a descendant of the

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...

goddess Hausos ('). Both goddesses share many similarities such as the cave ( Vala/ Iwato) and the exposure of breasts as a sign of friendship. Witzel proposed that the Japanese and Vedic religions are much more closely related compared to other mythologies under what he calls Laurasian mythology, and that the two myths may go back to the Indo-Iranian period, around 2000 BCE. This would make Uzume analogous to the

Greek goddess A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities of de ...

Eos and the

Roman goddess Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representat ...

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

References

External links

A substantial article on this subject
{{authority control Japanese goddesses Solar goddesses Shinto kami Trickster goddesses Arts goddesses Dawn goddesses