Ame-no-Sagume

Ame-no-Sagume is a female heavenly deity recorded in Kojiki (712 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE). In Kojiki, upper volume, kuni-yuzuri (transfer of the land) section, she serves Ame-no-Wakahiko in the central reed-plain land. When Kigishi-no-Nakime, a pheasant messenger from the heavenly council, alights on Wakahiko's tree and questions his eight-year silence, Ame-no-Sagume hears the bird's voice and tells Wakahiko, 'This bird's cry is ill-omened; you should shoot it.' Wakahiko shoots the pheasant, but the arrow reaches the heavens and is hurled back, striking Wakahiko himself. Nihon Shoki (Jindai-ge, ninth-segment alternate texts) records a parallel account. She has no recorded parentage and is positioned as a subordinate deity of Ame-no-Wakahiko in the kuni-yuzuri section, alongside the figure of Wakahiko's wife Shitateru-hime. Later medieval Noh and poetic traditions cast her as an emblem of ill counsel, but in Kojiki itself she is treated as a heavenly deity within the kuni-yuzuri narrative.