Susanoo's sword and male Kami from her own string of
jewels, the test which he himself proposed has resulted in his
conviction; but he, repudiating that verdict, proceeds to break down
the divisions of the rice-fields laid out by the goddess, to fill up
the ditches, and to defile the palace--details which suggest either
that, according to Japanese tradition, heaven has its agriculture and
architecture just as earth has, or that the "plain of high heaven"
was really the name of a place in the Far East. The Sun goddess makes
various excuses for her brother's lawless conduct, but he is not to
be placated. His next exploit is to flay a piebald horse and throw it
through a hole which he breaks in the roof of the hall where the
goddess is weaving garments for the Kami. In the alarm thus created,
the goddess* is wounded by her shuttle, whereupon she retires into a
cave and places a rock at the entrance, so that darkness falls upon
the "plain of high heaven" and upon the islands of Japan,** to the
consternation of the Kami of evil, whose voices are heard like the
buzzing of swarms of flies.

*According to the Records, it is the attendants of the goddess that
suffer injury.

**Referring to this episode, Aston writes in his Nihongi:
"Amaterasu-o-mi-Kami is throughout the greater part of this narrative
an anthropomorphic deity, with little that is specially
characteristic of her solar functions. Here, however, it is plainly
the sun itself which witholds its light and leaves the world to
darkness. This inconsistency, which has greatly exercised the native
theologians, is not peculiar to Japanese myth."

Then follows a scene perhaps the most celebrated in all the
mythological legends; a scene which was the origin of the sacred
dance in Japan and which furnished to artists in later ages a
frequent motive. The "eight hundred myriads" of Kami--so numerous
have the denizens of the "plain of high heaven" unaccountably
become--assemble in the bed of the "tranquil river"* to confer about
a means of enticing the goddess from her retirement. They entrust the
duty of forming a plan to the Kami of "thought combination," now
heard of for the first time as a son of one of the two producing
Kami, who, with the "great central" Kami, constituted the original
trinity of heavenly denizens. This deity gathers together a number of
barn-yard fowl to signal sunrise, places the Kami of the "strong arm"
at the entrance of the cave into which the godde