Amenominakanushi (天之御中主神)
The first deity of the Kojiki, appearing at the beginning of heaven, and an ancestor of the Japanese deities.
Amenominakanushi is the first deity named in the Kojiki, appearing at the beginning of the universe at the highest point of the plain of heaven. He takes almost no part in the myths that follow, which is part of why later devotion treats him as a source rather than an actor: an ancestor of the Japanese deities rather than a figure with a story. Suitengu in Tokyo, which enshrines him as its principal deity, describes his virtue as extending without limit to safe childbirth and to the granting of children, and Tokyo Daijingu counts him among the three deities of creation whose presence it gives as the reason for its own association with the tying of bonds.
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Places in this collection
ShrineSuitengu
- Family & Home
- Fertility & Children
- Protection & Safety
A Nihonbashi shrine long known for safe childbirth and for praying to conceive, whose safe-birth charm is a length of cotton worn as a belly band.
ShrineSapporo Suitengu
Begins in 1884 when Mizuno Genshirō, a former retainer of the Kurume domain, carried a divided spirit north from the head shrine of Suitengu at Kurume in Kyushu; it is Japan’s thirty-ninth branch shrine.
ShrineSoma Jinja
Begins in 1871 when settlers, chiefly former retainers of Mizusawa in Iwate, performed rites here as a distant-worship site facing Sapporo Jinja; a divided spirit from Soma in Fukushima came later and gave the shrine its name.
ShrineSuitengu
- Fertility & Children
- Protection & Safety
The head shrine of all the Suitengu in Japan, enshrining Amenominakanushi together with Emperor Antoku, Kenreimon’in and Nii-no-Ama of the Taira, and known for safe birth and protection from drowning.
ShrineHoshida Myokengu
The seven stars that fell from heaven in answer to Kobo Daishi’s rite came down in three places, and one of them is this shrine’s object of worship.