Ame-no-oshihomimi

Ame-no-oshihomimi

Ancientwell-documentedShintōJapan
Origin

Ame-no-oshihomimi is produced in the kami-generating episode between Amaterasu and Susanoo. According to the cited sources, Susanoo took Amaterasu's beads and crushed them in his mouth, which created five male kami; Ame-no-oshihomimi was the first to be born. He is presented within the heavenly genealogy as Amaterasu's first son and as an intermediary in the sequence that links heavenly authority to earthly rulership. In some versions of the narratives Amaterasu offers him the role of ruler of the earth, but he declines that offer. He later falls in love with Takuhadachiji-hime and fathers Ninigi-no-Mikoto, continuing the line that becomes associated with the Imperial ancestry.

Appearance

The supplied sources do not provide a physical description or stable iconography for Ame-no-oshihomimi. He is primarily attested and recognized through genealogical and mythic roles—his identity is established by name, etymology, and familial relations—rather than by visual depiction in the provided material.

Abilities

The sources emphasize his status and roles in lineage and succession rather than enumerating specific supernatural powers. He is described as the first son of Amaterasu and therefore qualified within the myths to be offered rulership of the earth, which he in some versions refuses. He is also described as fathering Ninigi-no-Mikoto through Takuhadachiji-hime. The supplied material does not catalogue explicit magical abilities, elemental control, or other powers beyond his function as a heavenly progenitor and link in the divine-to-imperial succession.

Entity Network
AŌAmaterasu Ōmi…AAme-no-oshihomi…
related
Related Entities
More from Japanese

5 Ronin

5 Ronin is a 2011 Marvel Comics five-issue limited series that reimagines five Marvel superhero archetypes as rōnin (masterless samurai) in a fictionalized post‑Sekigahara feudal Japan. The work places Wolverine, Hulk, Punisher, Psylocke, and Deadpool analogues into period roles to explore displacement, revenge, and identity in an era of political upheaval.

Abumi-guchi

A Japanese yōkai classed as a tsukumogami: an animated stirrup (abumi) depicted in Sekien Toriyama's Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. Traditional accounts say it is formed from a stirrup that belonged to a soldier who fell in battle and that it waits where the stirrup lies for its dead owner to return.

Abura-akago

An Edo-period yōkai depicted as an oil‑licking infant or a ball of flame. First recorded in illustrated compendia (notably Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki), the Abura-akago is tied to tales of oil‑stealing fires and functions in part as an etiological warning about wasting or stealing oil.

Abura-sumashi

A yōkai spirit from the Amakusa region of Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, said to inhabit mountain passes. Traditionally explained as the ghost of a person who stole oil, it appears to surprise travelers and is represented in modern media with a straw-coat body and a potato- or stone-like head.

Aburabō / Abura-bōzu / Aosaginohi (traditions)

Two distinct Japanese traditions appear under related flame imagery: Aosaginohi/Aosagibi is presented as a will-o'-the-wisp type luminous night phenomenon interpreted as reflections from herons; aburabōzu (abura bōzu, "oil monk") appears in a separate anecdote as a reported fire-breathing apparition in a 12th-century Yasaka Shrine tale. The sources treat them as separate portrayals rather than a single unified being.

Acala

Acala (Sanskrit: अचल, 'The Immovable') is a wrathful protective deity (dharmapala) in Vajrayāna and East Asian esoteric Buddhism, classed among the Wisdom Kings (Vidyārāja). He functions as a ritual focus for visualization and mantra practice intended to remove obstacles and bind or destroy hostile forces.

Agaru

Agaru (attested historically as Agarum) appears in the supplied sources as a Bronze Age Near Eastern toponym—often identified with Failaka Island—and as a modern personal or media name. The provided material contains no evidence that Agaru is a supernatural being in any traditional cosmology.

Ajisukitakahikone

Ajisukitakahikone is a kami in Japanese mythic literature (Kojiki/Nihon Shoki). He appears in the transfer-of-rule cycle between heaven and earth, is described as a son of Ōkuninushi, associated with the Kamo cult (called Kamo no ōmikami in some modern museum/catalog entries), and features in narratives that explain landscape formation and meteorological genealogy.

Aka Manto

Aka Manto (赤マント, "Red Cloak") is a Japanese urban legend and schoolyard ghost-story about a masked, cloaked figure who appears in public or school toilet stalls and forces occupants to choose between colored toilet paper; each choice in the tale produces a violent supernatural consequence. The legend is part of modern popular folklore recorded in school contexts from the 1930s onward rather than a formal religious myth.

Akaname

Akaname is a Japanese yōkai associated with baths, bathtubs, toilets, and other places where scum and filth accumulate. Traditionally depicted as a child-like creature that licks grime, it functions in folklore as a cautionary figure tied to cleanliness; a few narrative variants cast it as dangerously predatory.

Akashaguma

Akashaguma is presented in the available sources as a child-like house guardian spirit in the Japanese yokai tradition, closely comparable to the regional zashiki-warashi. It is associated with domestic interiors (parlors or storage rooms) and with bringing prosperity to households where it dwells.

Akashita

Akashita (赤舌, lit. “red tongue”) is an Edo-period pictorial yōkai commonly represented as a hairy, clawed face emerging from dark clouds with a wide open mouth and a conspicuous red tongue. The figure appears in yōkai emaki and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō; Sekien’s plate shows it atop a sluice, but the original pictorial tradition provides no explanatory caption. Later folklorists and popular writers (Shōwa and later) have variously interpreted the image as a punitive spirit linked to irrigation/floodgate justice or as a kidnapper in evening skies, though these narrative roles are post-hoc.

Community Record

Sources
  1. [1]
    Ame-no-oshihomimi — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors. "Ame-no-oshihomimi." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
  2. [2]
    Ame no Oshihomimi — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q462555: Ame no Oshihomimi.wiki
well-documented