Ame-no-Uzume

Ame-no-Uzume is the kami of dawn, of mirth and of sacred dance, and she is remembered above all for the part she plays in one of the central myths of Shinto: the luring of the sun back into the world. When the sun goddess Amaterasu, offended and frightened by the violent behaviour of her brother Susanoo, shut herself away in a rock cave and rolled a great stone across its mouth, the whole world was plunged into darkness, and calamities multiplied under the endless night. The assembled kami gathered before the cave to devise a way to draw her out. It is Ame-no-Uzume who provides the solution: she overturns a tub, mounts it, and performs a wild, ecstatic and comically indecent dance, loosening her clothing, until the whole company of the gods bursts into roaring laughter. Amaterasu, shut in her cave, hears the astonishing sound of the gods laughing in what should be a world of grief and darkness, and, unable to contain her curiosity, opens the cave a crack to see what could possibly cause such mirth. At that moment she catches sight of her own radiance in a mirror the gods have hung nearby, and while she is transfixed a strong kami pulls the door wide and draws her out, so that light returns to the world.

Ame-no-Uzume's dance is traditionally regarded as the mythic origin of kagura, the sacred dance of Shinto ritual, and of Japanese performing arts more broadly. She appears again at the descent of the heavenly grandson to earth, where her boldness confronts and wins over the fierce earthly kami Sarutahiko, whom she later marries. She is the divine embodiment of the power of joy, laughter and dance to break even the deepest darkness.

Ame-no-Uzume's uninhibited dance before the cave of Amaterasu has a durable afterlife in a specific piece of festival equipment still made and used today: the Okame mask, a round faced, smiling female mask with rosy cheeks, used in kagura performance and displayed at shrine festivals, on New Year decorations and above the entrances of some traditional shops and restaurants for good fortune. Performance tradition and popular etymology connect the comic, cheerful Okame figure, sometimes also called Otafuku, directly back to Ame-no-Uzume's dance, reading the mask's exaggerated, joyful plainness as a folk memory of the goddess whose ridiculous performance was funny enough to draw the sun herself out of hiding.

Uzume is also honoured as the mythic ancestress of the Sarume, a hereditary clan of court dancers and diviners attached to the ancient Japanese court, whose women performed kagura and other ritual functions and whose name preserves hers directly, sarume meaning monkey woman, a title connected in tradition to her marriage with the monkey-associated Sarutahiko. Between the Sarume lineage and the still-produced Okame mask, Uzume's comic, life-restoring dance has left a continuous material trace in Japanese festival culture that reaches from the ancient court down to shrine stalls today.