Mitsuhanome-no-Kami

Mitsuhanome-no-Kami is recorded in Kojiki (712 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE) as a goddess of water, guarding irrigation channels and springs and protecting agricultural water-use. She is one of the grain-line goddesses arising in the death of Izanami passage alongside Wakumusubi-no-Kami. Kojiki Upper Volume deity-making passage reads, "From the urine came Mitsuhanome-no-Kami and next Wakumusubi-no-Kami." She arises when Izanami-no-Mikoto, suffering burns from the birth of Kagutsuchi, brings forth a chain of deities from her bodily emissions. Her place at the end of the deity-making passage is central, as a deity of the generative principle of water and farming. Nihon Shoki Jindai chapter five variant gives the corresponding form Mitsuhanome-no-Kami written as "well-water-female deity." Her mother is Izanami-no-Mikoto, and her coeval kin include Wakumusubi-no-Kami, Kanayamabiko, Kanayamabime, Haniyasubiko and Haniyasubime, the cluster of post-Kagutsuchi deities of water, metal, soil and grain. Her chief seats are the three Nibukawakami Jinja in Yoshino, Nara (upper, middle and lower), revered as deities of rain-petition by the court. She is also enshrined at Kifune Jinja in Kyoto as the head shrine of waters.