Takachiho, the land of the gods.

Of all the myths in the Kojiki, this one is the most often retold — and the most often misunderstood.

The sun goddess Amaterasu, having quarrelled with her storm-god brother Susanoo, withdraws into a cave and rolls a boulder across the entrance. The world goes dark. Crops fail. Demons walk the earth in daylight. The eight million gods gather in council to argue what to do.

What they do is throw a party.

The lure

The gods plant a sacred tree before the cave. They hang a mirror in its branches. They gather a chicken, then drape jewels and white cloth on the boughs. The goddess Ame-no-Uzume climbs onto an overturned tub and begins to dance — and the dance, the Kojiki reports, is so unrestrained, so loud, that the eight million gods burst into laughter that shakes the high plain of heaven.

Inside the cave, Amaterasu listens. Why is the world laughing while she has hidden the sun?

She rolls the boulder back a finger’s width and peers out. The gods hold up the mirror. She sees her own light reflected and, mistaking it for a rival sun, leans further. A god pulls the boulder away. Another god strings a sacred rope across the cave entrance behind her: You may not enter again.

The world is bright once more.

Where it happened

Two places on the island of Kyushu claim the cave. The most visited is in Takachiho, in northern Miyazaki, where a deep volcanic gorge cuts through cedar forest and a small shrine — Ama-no-Iwato Jinja (天岩戸神社) — preserves what is said to be the cave itself. You can stand on the eastern shrine’s terrace and look across the valley at the cliff face where, by tradition, the sun goddess withdrew.

Two more sites complete the cycle:

• Ama-no-Yasugawara (天安河原) — the riverbed where the eight million gods met to plan the lure. A short walk from Iwato Jinja, beneath an enormous overhanging cliff. Visitors stack small stone cairns; thousands of them line the riverbed today.
• Takachiho Gorge (高千穂峡) — the deep volcanic ravine that frames the whole region. Boat rides through the gorge, beneath waterfalls and basalt columns, give you the most cinematic landscape in Japanese mythology.
• Kunimigaoka (国見ヶ丘) — the hill where the heavenly grandson Ninigi first surveyed the new earthly realm after his descent. A sea of clouds rolls in here on autumn mornings.

Two myths, one region

Takachiho holds the two great cosmic dramas of the Kojiki: the sun’s withdrawal, and heaven’s descent. Both happen here. The descent — when Ninigi, Amaterasu’s grandson, is sent down from the high plain of heaven to rule the earthly islands — is the political pivot the entire myth has been building toward. The cave is the cliffhanger. The descent is the resolution. Read in this region, in this order, the Kojiki finally feels like one continuous story rather than a list of episodes.