Japanese

The iconic curved sword of the Japanese samurai

The katana is the representative single-edged curved sword of Japan, regarded as the symbol of the samurai class and a weapon in which the soul dwells. With a gently curved blade of about 60 to 80 cm, it is made by a distinctive forging in which tamahagane, jade steel, is folded and hammered again and again. The spine of the blade, the mune, is soft steel and the edge, the ha, hard steel, so it has flexibility and cutting power together. The hamon, the temper line, produced by yaki-ire, hardening different parts differently with clay applied, is unique to each blade. Its present form took hold in the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573), and worn edge-up in the belt, the obi, it makes possible the fast draw, iai, that cuts in the very act of drawing the sword.

The ninja's concealed throwing weapon

The shuriken is a small Japanese throwing weapon, and as its name, meaning a blade hidden in the hand, suggests, it was an auxiliary weapon carried in secret and thrown. It falls into two broad families: the bo-shuriken, a thin spike or needle form about 15 to 25 cm long thrown point-first, and the shaken, the flat, multi-pointed star form widely known as the ninja's throwing star, about 10 to 15 cm across. Although popular culture portrays it as the ninja's main weapon, it was in fact not a main arm but an auxiliary tool of distraction and deterrence that scattered the enemy's attention. Several were carried hidden in the clothing or the sash, and they were made of iron or steel.

A multipurpose ninja tool and throwing weapon

The kunai was originally a Japanese multipurpose tool used by masons and gardeners — a thick, leaf-shaped iron blade with a ring pommel at the end of the grip. About 20–30 cm long and 200–400 g, it was first a tool for digging into earth and walls, prying open gaps, or working plaster. It became famous when the ninja (shinobi) adapted it as an all-purpose tool and weapon: driven into a wall or the ground as a foothold, tied through the ring to a rope for use as a grapple or anchor, or wielded as a close-quarters dagger in a pinch. Popular culture shows it as a thrown weapon like a shuriken, but in reality it was heavy and unaerodynamic, so it threw poorly. It is the classic example not of a purpose-built weapon but of an everyday tool turned to military use.

The straight-bladed Japanese spear

The yari is the straight-bladed spear of Japan, the main weapon of the battlefield in the Sengoku period (1467 to 1615). Its head is a straight, double-edged point forged by swordsmiths in the same way as a sword, joined firmly to the shaft by a long tang, the nakago, driven deep into the wood. By the form of the blade there are several variants: the su-yari with a single straight blade, the jumonji-yari with cross-shaped side blades, and the kama-yari with sickle-like curved side blades. The blade runs 15 to 90 cm and the total length with the shaft about 250 to 650 cm, and the especially long nagae-yari, the long-shafted pike, was wielded en masse by the ashigaru, the foot soldiers. The shaft was lacquered and the blade covered with a saya, a protective scabbard.

Kappa · The Japanese Water Yokai — A River Prankster With Power in a Head-Dish

The Kappa (Japanese Kappa, 'river child') is the water yokai that dwells in the rivers and ponds of Japan, the canonical iconographic figure of Japanese water-deity (suijin) belief, child-sized in build, with a turtle shell (kora), webbed hands and feet, and a water-holding plate (sara) on the crown of its head. The Sino-Japanese characters Kawa-warabe ('river child') correspond to the Japanese vernacular Kawako (river child), Kawataro (river boy), and many regional names. The iconographic origin is the fusion of Japanese indigenous water-deity belief with the drowning lore of riversides and ponds. The decisive textual source is the section in book 40 of the encyclopaedia Wakan Sansai Zue compiled in 1712 by Terajima Ryoan, which systematised the Kappa as the canonical figure with a beak, turtle shell on the back, and plate on the crown. The visual canon was established in the yokai catalogue Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776) of Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788). The decisive modern canon is Kunio Yanagita's (1875-1962) Tono Monogatari of June 1910 — seventeen Kappa folktales of the Tono region in Iwate Prefecture — which established the Japanese folkloristic Kappa canon, and Keiichi Hara's 2007 animated film Summer Days with Coo (Kappa no Ku to Natsuyasumi), released on 28 July 2007, settled the popular canon of twenty-first-century global Kappa iconography.

Oni · The Japanese Demon — A Horned, Hulking Man-Eating Ogre

The Oni (Japanese oni) is the gigantic and ferocious demon of Japanese tradition, the canonical iconographic figure of Japanese yokai distinguished by red or blue skin, horns on its head, sharp tusks, a tiger-skin loincloth (torainu fundoshi), and a wielded iron club, the kanabo. The etymology combines the Chinese ideogram 'gui' (the soul of the dead) with the Japanese indigenous root 'on' ('to hide'), per the canonical hypothesis of the eighteenth-century Japanese dictionary Wakun no Shiori compiled by Tanigawa Kotosuga. The iconographic origin is a composite of (1) the Chinese 'gui' belief, (2) the hell-wardens of Indian Buddhism (the ox-headed and horse-headed naraka-pala), and (3) the indigenous Japanese mountain-spirit belief. The most decisive Japanese text is the depiction of mountain spirits in the eighth-century Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720), and the canonical heroic narrative is the Shuten-doji story in the eleventh- and twelfth-century Konjaku Monogatarishu — in which Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948-1021) leads the Four Heavenly Kings including Watanabe no Tsuna to slay the oni Shuten-doji of Mount Oe in Tanba Province and present his head to the imperial court. The 2016-2020 Japanese manga Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba) by Koyoharu Gotouge established the twenty-first-century global canon of oni iconography.

Onryo · The Japanese Vengeful Ghost — A Cursing Specter Returned in Grudge

The Onryo (Japanese onryo, 'vengeful spirit') is the Japanese vengeful ghost born of injustice and deep resentment, dealing calamity to the living. The kanji combine on ('grudge, resentment') with ryo ('spirit'), giving 'spirit of grudge'. The canonical iconography is a white shinishozoku (burial robe), tangled long black hair, pale face, and resentful eyes. The defining trait that distinguishes the onryo from other East Asian ghosts is that the curse spreads not only to those who wronged the spirit but to unrelated bystanders. The iconographic origin lies in the goryo cult of the ninth-century Heian period, in which the politically defeated dead returned as vengeful spirits causing natural disasters and plagues; the canonical case is the deification of Sugawara no Michizane (845-903), who returned as an onryo and was placated by the establishment of the Tenmangu shrine system. Tsuruya Nanboku IV's kabuki play Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (1825), featuring the female onryo Oiwa, fixed the visual canon, and the modern J-horror canon of Suzuki Koji's novel Ring (1991), Nakata Hideo's film Ring (1998), and Shimizu Takashi's Ju-on (2002) globalised the figure.

Tsukumogami · The Tool Yokai — A Spirit Dwelling in a Hundred-Year-Old Object

The Tsukumogami (Japanese tsukumogami, 'tool kami') is the Japanese object-yokai born when a household tool has been in use for nearly ninety-nine years and acquires a soul. The etymology lies in Japanese tsukumo (ninety-nine), the indigenous animist belief from the Heian period (794-1185) that any tool surviving ninety-nine years gains consciousness and emotion. The canonical iconography is the Hyakki Yagyo (Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) procession of personified umbrellas, paper lanterns, straw sandals, kettles, lutes, mallets of fortune, and biwa lutes, which acquire eyes, arms, and legs to march at night. The Muromachi-period scroll Tsukumogami-ki (c. late fifteenth century) and the sixteenth-century Hyakki Yagyo Emaki scrolls fixed the visual canon, and Toriyama Sekien's Edo-period Gazu Hyakki Yagyo series (from 1776) systematised nearly one hundred tsukumogami types in an encyclopaedic catalogue. The motif of carelessly discarded tools harbouring resentment and avenging themselves on the living settled the figure as the iconographic condensation of the distinctively Japanese mottainai ethic of frugality and respect for objects.

Tengu · The Japanese Mountain Yokai — Master of Martial Arts and Punisher of Pride

The Tengu (Japanese tengu, 'celestial dog') is a yokai of Japan's deep mountains, depicted with the head of a crow or a red face with a long nose, with wings on its back. A master of swordsmanship, martial arts, and supernatural power, the tengu tests ascetics in the mountains or transmits secret techniques to the worthy. The etymology comes from the Han-period Chinese Tian-gou ('celestial dog') of the Shanhaijing, but the figure was decisively reshaped in Japan from the eighth century onward. The Nihon Shoki of 720 records the first Japanese reference, but the canonical iconography crystallised in the twelfth-century Konjaku Monogatari-shu as the avatar of a corrupt monk. Kamakura-era tales such as the Heike Monogatari fixed the tengu as a martial-arts master, with Sojobo of Mount Kurama said to have taught swordsmanship to Minamoto no Yoshitsune. The crow-headed Karasu-tengu represents the earlier iconography, while the red-faced, long-nosed Daitengu in yamabushi (mountain ascetic) garb crystallised in the Muromachi period. The tengu punishes the proud and teaches the humble.

Nue · Chimera — Legendary Japanese Monster

The Nue (Japanese Nue) is the canonical iconographic figure of the Heian-period Japanese chimeric yokai, possessed of the face of a monkey, the body of a raccoon dog (tanuki) or wildcat, the legs of a tiger, and the tail of a snake — one of the most mysterious composite yokai of Japanese legend. The name derives from the archaic Japanese name of the indigenous bird White's thrush (Zoothera dauma, in Japanese tora-tsugumi), whose sad and uncanny cry, when heard, is said in the canon to portend disaster — the canonical bird of the Onmyodo (Yin-Yang Way) belief of the Heian Imperial court. The iconographic origin is the Onmyodo belief of the Heian period (794-1185) and the canonised gunki-mono (military-tale) tradition of the late twelfth century. The decisive textual source is the chapter Nue in Book 4 of the early thirteenth-century Heike Monogatari (Tale of the Heike), the decisive canon of Japanese gunki-mono: in the spring of 1153 a black cloud appeared every dawn over the Heian-kyo Imperial Court from the eastern mountains and disturbed the sleep of Emperor Konoe (reigned 1139-1155), causing his illness; Minamoto no Yorimasa (1104-1180), the greatest archer of the Heian period, shot the nue down from within the black cloud — the decisive textual canon of the Nue legend. The 1779 yokai catalogue Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki by Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788) established the visual canon of the Nue.

Yuki-onna · The Snow Woman — A Cold, Sorrowful Beauty Appearing in the Blizzard

The Yuki-onna (Japanese Yuki-onna, 'snow woman') is the pale female yokai who appears suddenly in the night blizzard, the canonical iconographic figure of the Japanese winter snow-mountain yokai who in white kimono, jet-black hair, and a bloodless face approaches the lost traveller and freezes him to death with her cold breath. The iconographic origin is the fusion of the lethal-cold (toshi) folklore of Japan's heavy-snowfall regions in Tohoku, Chubu, and Hokkaido with mountain-deity (yama-no-kami) belief. The earliest textual record is the Sogi Shokoku Monogatari, a travel account by the renga poet Sogi (1421-1502) of the late Muromachi period (estimated late fifteenth century), describing a tall white-clad woman encountered in the snow mountains of Echigo Province (now Niigata Prefecture). In the Edo period, the Yuki-onna was systematised as a canonical yokai in the yokai catalogue Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776) of Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788). The decisive canon is the short story Yuki-Onna in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, the English-language short-story collection published in April 1904 by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904, Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo): the woodcutters Mosaku (the elder) and Minokichi of Musashi Province are trapped in a blizzard and rest in a hut, where the Yuki-onna kills Mosaku but spares the young Minokichi on his promise never to disclose the secret; years later Minokichi marries a woman named Oyuki, who turns out to be the same Yuki-onna, and she vanishes when he breaks the secret. This established the decisive canon of modern Yuki-onna iconography. Masaki Kobayashi's 1965 film Kwaidan, with its Yuki-onna episode, won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and completed the global canon.

勇者 · Hero — The chosen one destined to save the world

The hero is a special class chosen by gods or the world itself for the demon king's defeat. Unlike regular classes, 'hero' is closer to destiny than profession — from the moment of being chosen, all stats grow dramatically, mastering any weapon and learning any magic at top tier. The world's strongest class, yet its weight is too heavy to bear alone. The Japanese RPG essence Dragon Quest is credited with establishing the 'hero' concept, becoming a defining motif in Japanese fantasy through Final Fantasy and isekai light novels. The archetype of 'shōnen manga heroic narrative' where an ordinary rural youth is chosen by destiny — Tolkien's Frodo is a variant of the hero class.

忍者 · Ninja — A Japanese espionage warrior who fights through darkness and deception

The ninja (忍者) was a specialized warrior group of espionage, assassination, and reconnaissance active during 14-17th century Japan's Sengoku (Warring States) and early Edo period. While samurai were a profession of honor and direct combat, ninja were the opposite — using all unconventional means: disguise, infiltration, poison, traps, gunpowder weapons, and information manipulation. The most famous ninja clans were the two villages of Iga and Kōga, communities isolated in mountains transmitting ninja techniques (ninjutsu) hereditarily. Hattori Hanzō, who helped Tokugawa Ieyasu escape during the Honnō-ji Incident (1582), is the most renowned ninja. During the Tokugawa shogunate they were officially employed as the shogun's intelligence organization 'oniwaban.' Disappearing as a profession with the Meiji Restoration, they have become Japan's most powerful global cultural icon today.

武士 · Samurai — A Japanese warrior who unifies martial arts and the Way

The samurai (武士) was a professional warrior class that ruled Japan for about 700 years from the Kamakura shogunate of the 12th century until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Initially a military class guarding emperors and nobles, they seized political power from the late Heian period to establish warrior governments (shogunates). More than soldiers, samurai were an honor class following the moral code of bushido, with loyalty (chū), propriety (rei), courage (yū), righteousness (gi), and benevolence (jin) as core virtues. The privilege of wearing two swords (daisho) — katana (long sword) and wakizashi (short sword) — was theirs alone, and the tradition of seppuku (ritual disembowelment) when honor was lost became symbolic of Japanese culture. Miyamoto Musashi, Takeda Shingen, and Oda Nobunaga are exemplary figures.

Japan's iconic wrapped garment of seasonal beauty

The kimono is Japan's defining traditional garment — a T-shaped, straight-cut robe wrapped around the body and secured with an obi sash, always with the left panel over the right for the living. Its most remarkable aspect is the strict codification of seasonal patterns and fabrics: cherry blossoms for spring, flowing water for summer, maple leaves for autumn, and snow scenes for winter. The junihitoe (twelve-layer robe) worn by court ladies represents the pinnacle of this color-coordinated seasonal aesthetic, while variations like the long-sleeved furisode for unmarried women reflect a deeply layered system of social signaling.

Traditional Japanese jacket worn over kimono

The haori is a traditional Japanese hip-to-knee-length jacket worn open over a kimono, fastened loosely with decorative braided cords called haori-himo. Originating from the jinbaori worn by warriors over armor during the Sengoku period, it became established formal outerwear for the samurai class in the Edo period, with family crests (mon) on the back indicating rank and status. The distinctively Japanese "iki" aesthetic was expressed by painting elaborate designs on the inner lining while keeping the exterior subdued.

八岐大蛇 · Eight-Headed Serpent of Japanese Myth

Yamata-no-Orochi ('eight-forked great serpent') is the most iconic many-headed dragon-serpent of Japanese myth, recorded in the early eighth century in the two foundational chronicles of the Japanese state: the 'Kojiki' (712) compiled by Ō no Yasumaro and the 'Nihon Shoki' (720) compiled under Prince Toneri. The serpent has eight heads and eight tails, and its body is so vast that it covers 'eight valleys and eight ridges, with cypress and cedar growing on its back and its belly always inflamed and bleeding'. It appears each year along the Hi no Kawa (today's Hii River) in the Izumo region (eastern Shimane prefecture) and demands one of the daughters of the old couple Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi as tribute. After devouring seven of their eight daughters, it returns for the last, Kushinada-hime, when the storm-god Susanoo, banished from heaven, descends to Izumo. Susanoo prepares yashiori-no-sake (a wine brewed and refined eight times, sometimes called 'eight-fold wine'), pours it into eight large vats placed before eight gates so that each of Orochi's eight heads will drink from a separate vat, and waits until the eight heads are dead drunk. He then severs all eight heads and eight tails with the divine sword Totsuka-no-Tsurugi (a sword 'ten hand-spans long'). When one tail dulls his blade, he finds inside it another, finer sword — the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (also Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi), one of the Three Sacred Treasures of the Japanese imperial house, today enshrined at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture.

The Sea Dragon of Japanese Myth

The Ryū is the Japanese dragon, descended from the Chinese long imported via Buddhism in the sixth century and fused with native serpent and water cults. The most visible mark of its lower rank in the East-Asian dragon hierarchy is the three-toed foot, contrasted with the five-toed Chinese imperial dragon and the four-toed Korean dragon. The most celebrated ryū in the corpus is Yamata-no-Orochi, the eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent recorded in the Kojiki (712, compiled by Ō no Yasumaro) and the Nihon Shoki (720), defeated by the storm god Susanoo-no-Mikoto after being made drunk on rice wine; from its tail emerged the sword Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, one of the three imperial regalia. The dragon king Ryūjin commands sea and storm and reigns over Ryūgū-jō, the undersea palace to which the fisherman Urashima Tarō is led. The ryū is a fixture of temple and shrine ceiling paintings — most famously Kanō Tan'yū's 'Naki-Ryū' (1640s) at Nikkō Tōshō-gū — and of ukiyo-e prints such as Hokusai's 'Hundred Views of Mount Fuji' (1834).

Traditional helmet of the Japanese samurai

The kabuto is the traditional helmet worn by the Japanese samurai with his armor. Several iron plates are riveted together to form the rounded bowl (hachi), behind which hang several lames of a neck guard (the shikoro) covering the neck and shoulders, while the turn-backs (fukigaeshi) folded up at the front of the shikoro guard the sides of the face and bore the family crest. At the front of the helmet a crest called the maedate was mounted, to show who the wearer was on the battlefield and to display his dignity. By the Sengoku period commanders vied to make individual 'transformed helmets' (kawari-kabuto), their shapes built up in lacquered paper, wood, and leather; the crescent moon of Date Masamune and the fern-leaf crest of Tokugawa Ieyasu are especially famous. The weight came to about 2 to 5 kg depending on the ornament, and inside it was lined with padding and secured by a chin cord (the shinobi-no-o).

Grand armor of the Japanese samurai

The o-yoroi (great armor) is the classic large-style armor of the Japanese samurai, perfected in the Heian period for the mounted warrior. It is a lamellar armor, built from small scales (kozane) of iron and lacquered leather laced densely together with colored silk cords (odoshi) and finished over with leather and silk in splendid fashion. Above all it was designed for mounted archery: the box-like cuirass wraps the body, the right side covered by a separate piece called the waidate so as not to hinder the bow, and a panel of tooled leather (the tsurubashiri) over the front kept the bowstring from catching on the lamellae. Large square shoulder guards (o-sode) hung at each shoulder, serving like small shields that covered the flanks when the arms were raised to shoot. The skirt of hanging plates (kusazuri) was divided into four sections so the wearer could sit a horse, and at roughly 25 to 30 kg it was heavy armor. From the Heian into the Muromachi period it was worn for some five centuries as the armor of high-ranking warriors.

Japanese armored gauntlet and forearm guard

The kote is the armor made to guard the arm and hand of the Japanese samurai, a composite structure of mail (kusari) and small iron plates sewn onto a cloth sleeve. Unlike the Western gauntlet, made wholly of plate, the kote combined metal and textile to seek a balance of flexibility and protection, showing the design philosophy of Japanese armor as a whole. The back of the hand was covered separately by an iron plate (the tekko), and the forearm and elbow were wrapped in mail and small plates. In the early age of mounted archery in particular, it was common to wear a single kote only on the left arm (the bow-holding arm), or to guard the left arm more heavily, an asymmetric practice that shows archery was at the heart of samurai combat. Worn as a set with a cuirass such as the o-yoroi or do-maru, it guarded the whole arm, and developed into various forms through the Sengoku period.

Japanese horse armor of the samurai era

The uma-yoroi (umayoroi, horse armor) is the armor made to guard the warhorse of the Japanese samurai, a distinctive defense applying Japan's own armor-making technique to the horse. Three parts form its core: the bamen covering the head, the kubi-yoroi wrapping the neck, and the muna-ate covering the chest, and it is light and simple compared to the Western barding that encased the whole horse. The way of making it by lacing small scales (kozane) with cords is the same as the samurai's o-yoroi, so it kept the flexibility and ease of repair distinctive of Japanese armor while still giving ample defense. The bamen was often decorated splendidly and menacingly, modeled on the face of a dragon or beast beyond a mere cover, showing that the aesthetic of armor craft reached even to the horse. As mounted combat grew in importance in the Sengoku period, the use of uma-yoroi expanded, but it never spread as widely as Western barding.

Large standing shield of feudal Japan

The tate is the large wooden shield of Japan, set up on the ground and used as cover from behind, a fixed defensive piece with a philosophy of use fundamentally different from the Western shield held and moved in the hand. About 120 to 150 cm tall, it was large enough to hide a man's whole body. It was used chiefly in siege and defensive warfare as cover from which archers, hidden behind the tate, shot their arrows, and set up several in a row it formed an instant wall. A prop was set behind it to stand it at a slant, and a coat of arms was often painted on the face to mark the camp. Samurai culture had the distinctive tradition of the individual not carrying a shield in the hand, born of a way of fighting that valued two-handed weapons such as the katana and yari, the protection of the armor itself, and the great shoulder guards (the o-sode). So in Japan the shield took on the character of a defensive installation for building a position, not personal gear.

Okinawan metal knuckle guard

The tekko is the small knuckle guard that grew out of the kobudo of Ryukyu in Okinawa, a very simple piece made of a flat metal plate covering the back of the fist and two short bars within it that the fingers grip. It is said that its shape and weight were taken from the straw sandal that a man wore on his foot and the iron shoe of a horse's hoof, and so the tekko is usually borne in a pair, one in each hand. In that it covers the back of the hand, it is like the Western brass knuckle, but unlike the brass knuckle, which wraps only the finger joints, the tekko covers the whole back of the hand with a single face, guarding the fist and giving the single blow of the fist a greater weight by its mass. Being a small piece, it is easy to hide in one hand and hard to see from afar, and so in the age of the Ryukyu kingdom, when the bearing of arms was strictly forbidden, it was learned in secret by the villager and the martial artist as one strand of self-defense.

Kagutsuchi · 軻遇突智 — King of the Destructive Flame

Kagutsuchi (Kagutsuchi, Hi-no-Kagutsuchi) is the decisive canonical fire god of Japanese mythology. The etymology is the Japanese compound of kagu ('shining, radiant') and tsuchi ('spirit, soul') — meaning 'shining soul' — the decisive canonical vocabulary, and the alias Hi-no-Kagutsuchi ('fire Kagutsuchi') indicates that he is the embodiment of fire — the decisive canon. The decisive textual canon is the Volume 1 of the Kojiki (Kojiki) — the oldest extant Japanese historical chronicle compiled by Ono no Yasumaro (660-c. 723) in the Nara period and presented to the 43rd Empress Genmei (Empress Genmei, 661-721) on 28 January 712 CE — the Japanese creation mythology — the decisive canon, in which the mother goddess Izanami (Izanami) dies of burns while giving birth to Kagutsuchi, and the enraged father god Izanagi (Izanagi) beheads Kagutsuchi with his Totsuka-no-Tsurugi (Totsuka-no-Tsurugi, ten-hand sword) — the decisive tragic mythological canon. The Nihon Shoki (Nihon Shoki) Volume 1 Age of the Gods Upper Chapter, presented by Prince Toneri (Prince Toneri, 676-735) to the 44th Empress Gensho in 720 CE, also decisively records this — the decisive canon. From Kagutsuchi's blood and corpse fragments, dozens of new gods were born — the decisive canon — and Kagutsuchi is enshrined at the Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha (Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha, Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka Prefecture) — the decisive Japanese volcano-faith canon.

Amaterasu · Japanese Sun Goddess — Ancestress of the Imperial House

Amaterasu (Amaterasu-Ōmikami) is the supreme deity and sun goddess of Japanese Shinto mythology — the decisive canon — the ruler of Takamagahara and the ancestor of the Japanese Imperial Family — the decisive canonical iconographic figure. The etymology is Amaterasu (, 'the one who illuminates heaven') + Ōmikami (, 'great deity') — the decisive canonical vocabulary — and aliases Ōhirume-no-Muchi (, 'great goddess of the sun'), Amaterasu-Ōmikami, and the Great Deity of Ise are the decisive canonical vocabulary. The decisive textual canon is the decisive origin canon of Kojiki Vol. 1 of 712 CE by Ō no Yasumaro — Amaterasu was born from Izanagi's left eye when he returned from Yomi and purified himself — and the decisive canon of Amaterasu hiding in Ame-no-Iwato (, Heavenly Rock Cave) in fury at her brother Susanoo's outrages, plunging the world into darkness. The decisive canon of Nihon Shoki Vol. 1 Age of the Gods of 720 CE by Prince Toneri, and the decisive canon of the principal deity of the Inner Shrine (Naiku) of Ise Grand Shrine and the Shikinen Sengū ritual every 20 years.