by Donna George Storey
(06/11/08)

Her Augustness Heavenly-Alarming Female lay a soundingboard before the door of the rock dwelling [where Amaterasu Omikami, She Who Is Heaven Shining, was in retreat]. She stamped on it until she made a sound in a wild and frenzied manner as if possessed, and she pulled out the nipples of her breasts and pushed down her skirt string and exposed her private parts. Then the Plain of High Heaven shook and the eight hundred Deities laughed together.

--Records of Ancient Matters, Japan, AD 680

Why did they laugh?

Amaterasu, Supreme Goddess of the Plain of High Heaven, closed her eyes and lay back on the bed she'd fashioned from her thousand-layer kimono. She would discover the answer. She would not leave the sanctuary of this cave until she did.

Outside, the pounding grew louder, more desperate. The High Council of Japanese Deities had called upon the God of Strength to beat his great fists against the boulder she had rolled across the opening of the cave. No one was laughing now.

"Come out, Great Shining One, we entreat you! We've been too long without your light. The mortals on the Reed Plain below are wailing with fear. We will do anything to appease your wrath."

If only they would go away and leave me alone.

Not all the eight hundred myriad Deities could move her with their pleas. It was indeed rage -- and confusion -- that had brought her to shut herself away in this place, but those feelings had already melted into the sultry air of the cave. She found that she was beginning to enjoy solitude.

The world beyond might be plunged into darkness, but Amaterasu's retreat glowed like an oven. The walls of the cave sweated a pearly dew, fragrant as new bread.

The Shining One herself felt beads of moisture rise on her skin. Seeking relief, she stripped off her thousand robes one by one, the rosy hues of dawn tangled together with the deep ochres and indigos of sunset, until all that remained was bare golden flesh.

Amaterasu blushed at first to behold her unclothed form, but then her lips curved into a smile. She had never done such a thing before. Baths in the Tranquil River of Heaven were hurried affairs, her handmaidens shielding her from any untoward gaze with screens of silver clouds. Until now, the goddess, too, had turned her eyes away from her own nakedness. Partly from modesty, yes, but there were so many other things to observe in her realm below as she journeyed across the sky each day.

In this place, however, there was nothing to gaze upon but the terrain of her own flesh, rising up over her breasts, then sloping down into a shimmering meadow of grasses that narrowed between her gilded thighs like a dancing girl's fan.

The vision made her light-headed, as if she had drunk deep from a vat of sacred rice wine. She brought her hands to her chest -- to calm herself at first. But then her fingers began to wander over her breasts, circling, stroking and pinching the pointed tips, which blushed deep rose like the mountain peaks at dawn.

Her hands traveled down over her belly. She felt a throbbing there, as if a smaller, hotter cave was hidden away within her.

Outside the knocking and pleading started up once more. "Great Shining One, we beseech you! The High Council has exiled your brother. He will trouble you no more."

Her brother's unruly acts were indeed one reason she had locked herself away, but Amaterasu only sniffed at the news. Her hands continued their journey, ever lower through the meadow of silken thread to the cleft between her legs. Her fingertip ventured into the dewy vale. Why did her face feel so hot now? Why did her thighs fall open of their own accord?

Amaterasu caught her breath when she found it, a small jewel swathed in the silky softness of the crevice. The Heavens must hold magic even she did not know. How else could it be that one touch sent hot, jagged lightning all through her body?

She touched the jewel again. And again. Her nimble master weaver's fingers began to dance over it, as they did at her sacred loom, conjuring a tapestry of sensation that rippled through her. Her flesh was white-hot now, the radiance swelling to fill the cave.

"Her beams shine through the stone in a golden crown of light," the voices cried. "She is coming. Heaven and Earth will be saved."

Lost as she was in her pleasure, Amaterasu had to smile at their foolish words. Her fingers slowed. The corona of light around her faded from the blinding yellow of high summer to winter's pale fire.

No, she was not coming yet. Not until she had her answer. She knew now it was within her grasp.

How long had it been since she began her ascent of the vault of Heaven without a troubled heart? Each day her golden eyes roamed the land below, warming the backs of the sinewy laborers scything grain and fishermen hauling in nets swollen with thrashing fish. But it was the women, her subjects fashioned in her own lovely image, who made her pause in her journey. She watched mothers carrying babies on their hips, pressing their noses to their tiny heads to breathe in the clean scent of grain and milk. She gazed upon maidens washing clothes in the streams, their robes hiked over their opalescent thighs. And, now and then -- although her twin brother, the moon, was said to enjoy this sight far more often -- she spied a woman giving herself to a man's embrace.

Amaterasu would stare, the blush of evening settling on her cheeks, as the man kissed the woman's lips and neck, then pulled her robe from her shoulders to uncover her breasts. Some men would only gaze for a while, making a sound of pleasure as if sitting down to a fine supper. Some would caress the creamy demi-globes, or toy with the nipples like a child, then child-like still, bend to suckle.

After a time -- sometimes brief, sometimes long -- the man would pull away his loincloth to reveal his own secret, a ruddy rod of flesh rearing up from between his thighs. He would push this rod between the woman's bared legs where, by some trick, it disappeared. The two bodies moved together as if in some strange dance. Did it hurt to have that thing inside you? Amaterasu wondered. She had many children but they'd been born from her broken sword, and her sacred jewels and the mist of her breath.

She studied the faces of the women as they lay beneath the men, or bent over them from above, or crouched on all fours to be entered from behind. Some did indeed seem pained, their mouths set in a grim line, but others set to wailing and moaning in way that did not sound at all sad. A few, and this was the strangest of all, would laugh out loud.

Why?

Each morning Amaterasu rose, determined to unravel this mystery. Yet, day after day, no answer came. The other gods kept their distance from the Great Shining One, and no mortal would dare presume to court her. After midnight, when she'd finished weaving stars of silver thread onto the night sky, she would retire alone to her private pavilion while the other gods gathered to drink saké and dance. Some were so heedless in their lust, they took their pleasure outside her very door, grunting together like beasts. But Amaterasu could no more be one with them than with the tiny mortals on the Reed Plain far below.

She was the goddess of all that was light, but inside she was only darkness.

Then came the day her spirited brother, Susano-o the Storm God, ascended to Heaven to pay his respects. For the next few days, Amaterasu almost forgot her loneliness. Laughing and reeking of saké, Susano-o would pull his sister from her loom to join in the celestial revelry. He kept her wine cup full and told her ribald jokes that, the other gods were astounded to observe, made her grave eyes gleam and her stately mouth curve ever-so-slightly upward in amusement.

But her brother gave Amaterasu another gift that she spoke of to no one. She'd been on her way back from the bath, when she saw him -- them -- running through the forest. A minor deity, the guardian of spring flowers, raced into the sacred grove with Susano-o in thundering pursuit. One gust from his mighty lungs sent her pastel robes flying up around her waist to expose her rosy buttocks and stem-like legs. The goddess cried out and stopped to cover herself, an unfortunate gesture, as it allowed the Storm God to catch her and pull her to the ground. He pawed at the young deity's body, all the while feasting on her soft neck and small breasts with greedy, lapping sounds.

Frozen to the spot, Amaterasu could only watch as Susano-o wedged his knees between his captive's legs and wrenched them open. Impetuous as he was, he immediately drew his maleness from his robes: a purple truncheon that made Amaterasu wince. It was then she resolved to help the maiden, but just as she stepped forward, the flower guardian sat up, beheld her brother's weapon, and began to giggle. Still laughing, she extended a dainty hand to touch it. Amaterasu withdrew to the shadows of an ancient tree and stared as the small hand grasped the ruddy stalk and rubbed it up and down from the root to its domed, bulging head. Susano-o, who had never been quiet or still since his birth from his father's sneeze, simply knelt there under her caresses, still as stone. Tears of rain seeped down his cheeks -- and, as if in sympathy, a few more wept from the smaller eye at the tip of his lordly member.

As the Shining One gazed, transfixed, the flower goddess grew bolder. She pushed the Storm God back on the ground and lowered herself onto that fearsome cylinder of flesh. A soft howl rose from Susano-o's lips as the goddess arched and shook in the mating dance. A nameless sound came forth from her throat, too, not a song, not a sigh. If pressed, Amaterasu would have to say the flower goddess was laughing.

Why?

That night Amaterasu refused to join in the party. She sat in her pavilion, questions whirling through her head until the stars winked out, one by one, in preparation for her ascent. She was not like her brother, that much she knew. Yet the vision of his coupling with the flower guardian still throbbed inside her. Like hunger. Like pain.

Feeling bored and slighted by his melancholy sister, it was then Susano-o began his mischief. He blustered through the Heavens, breaking down the rice canals and vomiting in the Sacred Shrine. Amaterasu excused him by saying he'd drunk too much saké, though she knew the other gods disapproved of her indulgence.

Her kindness seemed to enrage him all the more. "Maybe this will get a rise out of you," he bellowed as he hurled a flayed colt right through the roof of the hall where Amaterasu and her handmaidens wove the night sky.

The weaver maids screamed and scattered, but one of her favorites, a fragile goddess as white as porcelain, was caught beneath a fallen loom, sending her to the underworld for eternity. Shaking with sorrow, the Shining One could not confront her brother with his terrible deeds even now. For in truth, the skinless corpse of the colt reminded her all too keenly of the moist red cleft of the flower guardian, so rudely exposed as she lay with Susano-o on a bed of leaves in the forest.

Her face blazing orange with rage and shame, Amaterasu rushed to the cave on the banks of the Tranquil River of Heaven and rolled the boulder door across the opening.

Now Heaven and Earth dwelled in the same darkness that troubled her heart.

Amaterasu sat up and tilted an ear toward the door of the cave. Voices rose again, louder than before, but this time there was no pleading or lamentation. The myriad Deities were cheering and calling out a name.

"Uzumé, the Whirling One, Heaven's Forthright Female, give us a show!"

The Shining One frowned. Had her subjects forgotten her so soon? She had made wondrous discoveries in her solitude, but part of her longed to join in the merrymaking once more.

The pounding started slowly, echoing throughout the Heavens.

"Faster, Whirling One! Faster!"

Amaterasu understood then it was no drum. Uzumé was dancing, playing the floor of the wooden stage with her feet. She had seen this Forthright Female, Goddess of Mirth and Playfulness, dance to the music of her brother's sighs a few brief nights ago. She saw her now, her figure flickering against the cave wall, almost too bright to be mere memory. Uzumé's wild black hair falling to her knees. Her generous crimson mouth. Her skirt riding scandalously low on her broad hips. Amaterasu could even smell her: musk, seawater and a smoky, honeyed scent, like broiled sweetish.

"Show us your tits, Uzumé!"

The Shining One recognized the nasal voice of Sarutahiko, the Phallic God. His very long, red nose had a bulbous tip that made Amaterasu think of a misshapen mushroom. She always averted her gaze when their paths met.

"Holy Heaven, she's actually doing it," came the voice of a goddess, hoarse with excitement. "How can she shake them round and round like that? There's a trick I'd like to learn."

A chorus of deeper voices joined in. "That's it, play with your own nipples. Are they big enough you can suck 'em yourself? What else have you got for us, Uzumé? Look at what I have for you, you're making me hard as a rock!"

Amaterasu moved closer to the cave door. Impulsively, she gathered her robes around her body and tied the sash in a makeshift knot.

"She's not taking off her skirt, is she? Even that hussy wouldn't go so far!"

Amaterasu rested her hand on the boulder. She wanted to see Uzumé's lewd show so badly she was trembling.

"There goes the skirt. I can't believe it, now she's spreading her legs. She touching herself, holding her nether lips open so all can see..."

Suddenly the Heavens erupted, a torrent of sound crashing against the boulder at the door of the cave. Shrill female cries rose in waves above the rolling thunder of male jollity. It took the sun goddess a few moments to understand what it was: all eight hundred myriad Deities were laughing.

What was so goddamn funny?

Amaterasu nudged the rock aside and peeked out.

A vision shimmered before her, suspended in mid-air amidst the thick branches of the Heavenly Sakaki Tree. It was the image of woman, lips parted in surprise. Her oval face gleamed a dark burnished gold, her glossy hair tumbled around her shoulders in voluptuous disarray. Amaterasu pushed the boulder aside a few inches more. Now she glimpsed the woman's resplendent body, draped in a kimono of a thousand hues, which fell suggestively over one smooth shoulder.

The Shining One brought her hand to her cheek. The woman did the same.

Amaterasu let her fingertips slide down to touch her chest, where the breasts began to swell. The woman floating in the tree did the same. Her eyes, gazing steadily back, glimmered with secret pleasure. The smaller, hotter cave deep in Amaterasu's belly began to glow once more.

She was ready to come out.

Japanese legend tells that the Shining One was indeed tricked into coming out of seclusion when she saw her reflection in a mirror hung in the sacred tree. But Amaterasu was never really fooled. She knew she was gazing at her own face. Yet how different that visage was from the timid, wavering reflection she had seen during her ablutions in the Tranquil River of Heaven. This woman in the mirror knew dark, hidden secrets. She was beautiful.

"Why?" the Shining One murmured. "Why are you all making such an ungodly noise?"

Naked but for a gossamer shift of sweat glittering like jewels, Uzumé jumped from the stage and hurried to her mistress. She gestured to the image of the woman floating in the tree. "We are celebrating, Shining One, because we have seen a new goddess who is more illustrious than you."

Amaterasu stepped out of the cave, only dimly aware the God of Strength rolled the boulder back into place behind her and bolted it fast with iron braces. She fixed her gaze on Uzumé -- if only that impudent dancer knew how right she was -- a frown clouding her features.

"You have disturbed me in my rest." Her voice resounded through the Heavens, and all of the eight hundred myriad Deities sputtered apologies and fell prostrate to the ground. All but one. Uzumé remained standing, biting her lip to hold back a smile.

Amaterasu drew herself to her full height. "And you, Forthright Female, the most brazen of all my subjects." She paused, as if she were deciding which punishment would be most terrible and fitting. "I will speak with you alone."

Uzumé hung her head -- in fear or to hide a smile? -- and followed her mistress into the sacred grove not far from the river's edge.

Once they were alone, Amaterasu whirled around to face the dancer. "Uzumé! I want you to show me exactly what you did on stage."

"Shining One," the Forthright Female protested, "if that is what you desire, I must return and put on my robe and skirt for that is how I began the dance."

"I don't care about that part of it." Amaterasu faltered. "The voices, back there, they said...you touched your own breasts...and you bared yourself below..." She found she could not continue.

"I did do these things as I danced, Shining One." Uzumé raised her head and looked straight into Amaterasu's eyes. "But now I would much rather show you another dance. It requires two."

Amaterasu let out a whimper of surprise as the dancer grasped her hands and pressed them to her naked, sweat-slick bosom. Uzumé's breasts were larger than her own, the flesh spilling over her hands. The dark nipples were as round as the saucers upon which the celestial handmaidens served dainties. So different from her own and yet, when Amaterasu rolled the tips between her fingers, the tips stood up like little knobs, just as hers did now beneath her kimono.

"Ah, I see I have no need to show you anything, Shining One. What secrets did you discover when you were in that cave?" Uzumé gave her a sly look, but soon enough she seemed to forget her question, as her head lolled back and her breath quickened.

Amaterasu grew bolder, exploring the dancer's body at her will. Uzumé's lower meadow was thicker, the coarse grasses tickling her fingers in an oddly pleasant fashion. But as the Shining One's fingers parted the lips and sought the silk-swathed jewel, the vision was suddenly familiar, as if she were looking in a dusky mirror, the reflection darker, though nonetheless true.

She stroked the hard little nugget, which seemed to swell against the tireless attentions of her finger. Soon Uzumé's legs began to tremble. With a cry, the dancer fell to her knees, panting. "It is too soon for the dance to end, Shining One. First there's another step I must show you. May I part your August robes?"

Amaterasu gazed at Uzumé's upturned face, the playful grin, the sparkling eyes. The Forthright Female knew the secret. Uzumé knew exactly why they laughed.

And so Amaterasu pulled aside her thousand robes of every hue and tilted her hips forward to accept the homage of the dancer's satin tongue.

Now she did know for certain that the Plain of High Heaven held more magic than she had ever fathomed. How else could the dance of Uzumé's tongue send answering tongues of flame licking up through her belly, the heat turning to a steady drumbeat of desire? The pounding inside her grew faster and louder. Amaterasu's knees gave way and she sank to the ground.

Uzumé knelt above her now, her lips and chin glistening. "You are so beautiful down there, Shining One," she whispered, "like folds of shimmering golden cloth. And you taste like a ripe peach from the Garden of Eternal Summer."

So, this is what it means to be seen, to be loved.

Amaterasu reached up and touched Uzumé's cheek. "Let me see you. Let me taste you."

Uzumé turned and straddled the sun goddess' glowing face.

Amaterasu's lungs ached with Uzumé's smoky-sweet perfume, her lips sucked in her wetness. Timidly she sought out the secret jewel with the tip of her tongue. The way Uzumé began to jerk her hips and moan in a most forthright manner told her she had found it.

This is what it means to dance.

Uzumé bent forward, nestling her face between Amaterasu's thighs. It was then the duet began in earnest: Uzumé's tongue twirling, whirling, tapping. Amaterasu tried her best to mimic her teacher, but soon her body moved of its own accord. Her belly ignited with a column of fire that filled her torso and poured through her mouth into Uzumé's body, only to be fed back again by the dancer's skill. One above and one below, mirroring each other in a pulsing circle of gold.

This is what I want inside me. This is what I wanted all along.

Uzumé's tongue grew more frenzied. Her hips swayed and shook. Urgent and hungry, Amaterasu spread her own legs wider and pushed against the dancer's mouth.

That's when it happened.

The feeling came in waves, a huge, hot fist squeezing her insides over and over again. She knew with all her being that this explosion of light inside her was Heaven's greatest bounty. And the sound she made then was not dainty, and was neither song nor sigh.

For the first time, though it would not be the last, Amaterasu, Supreme Goddess of the Plain of High Heaven, laughed.

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