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(heaven) and Ashi-wara no naka-tsu-kuni (Japan) were dark. Why has Amé-no-uzumé danced, and why do the gods all laugh?” Thereupon Amé-no-uzumé replied: “I dance and they laugh because there is an honourable deity here who surpasses your Glory (alluding to the mirror.” As she said this Amé-no-futo-dama no mikoto pushed forward the mirror, and showed it to her, and the astonishment of Amaterasu ô-mi-kami was greater even than before. She was coming out of the door to look, when Amé-no-tajikara-o no kami, who stood there concealed, pulled the rock-door open, and taking her august hand dragged her forth. Then Amé-no-koyané no mikoto took a rice straw rope, and passed it behind her, saying: “do not not go back in behind this.” As they were putting the mirror into the cave it struck against the door, and received a flaw which it has to this day.
They then removed the goddess to her new palace and put a straw rope round it to keep off evil gods, a practice still observed by the Shintô-ists.
Yorodzu-hata-toyo-akitsu-himé no kami, the second of the aidono of the Naikû, is another of the subordinate deities attached to Ninigi no mikoto when he descended upon the earth.
The mirror which plays such a prominent part in this legend was, as I have related above, given to Ninigi no mikoto, and by him handed down to his descendants, who kept it in the royal palace. In the year 92 B. C. there was a rebellion in Japan, which the reigning mikado (long afterwards canonized as Sûjin Tennô) believed to be a punishment for his having kept the sacred emblem under his own roof. He therefore placed the real mirror and sword in a shrine built for this purpose at Kasanui in Yamato, and appointed one of his own daughters to be priestess. The copies of the mirror and sword which he had made were placed in a separate building within the palace called kashiko-dokoro, or ‘place of reverence.’ Late on, in consequence of a warning from the goddess, the princess carried the mirror from province to province,
