Haniyasubime-no-Kami

Haniyasubime-no-Kami is recorded in Kojiki (712 CE) Upper Volume in the deity-making passage of the death of Izanami. The text reads, "From the excrement came Haniyasubiko-no-Kami and next Haniyasubime-no-Kami." The deity arises when Izanami-no-Mikoto, having borne Kagutsuchi and suffered burns, brings forth a chain of deities from her bodily emissions before her death. Paired with the male Haniyasubiko-no-Kami, she carries the function of earth. The coeval cluster includes Mitsuhanome-no-Kami (water) and Wakumusubi-no-Kami (generative grain), forming the post-Kagutsuchi second stage of deity making with the functional roles of earth, water and growth. She is enshrined in small Hokuriku and Kinki shrines including Hanyo Jinja in Oi, Fukui. Tied to the Haji ancestral tradition of clay and pottery, traces of her cult are found in small chapels near ancient haniwa production sites in Nara, as a goddess of pottery and the soil of cultivation.