Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami

Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami is a grain deity recorded in Kojiki (712 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE), the personification of the spirit of rice and other foods. Kojiki, upper volume, Takehaya-Susanoo-no-Mikoto genealogy section, lists him concisely: 'Otoshi-no-Kami, next Uka-no-Mitama-no-Kami,' born to Susanoo and Kamuoichi-hime, daughter of Oyamatsumi, alongside Otoshi-no-Kami. Nihon Shoki (Jindai-jo, fifth-segment alternate texts) lists him as a son of Izanagi and Izanami under the name Uka-no-Mitama-no-Mikoto. He appears little in narrative but holds a major place in ritual as the personification of rice-soul and food-soul. According to Kojiki, his father is Susanoo and his mother Kamuoichi-hime, daughter of Oyamatsumi; his sibling Otoshi-no-Kami stands as a paired grain deity. Equivalent and parallel deities include Ukemochi-no-Kami (Nihon Shoki), Ogetsu-hime-no-Kami, and Toyouke-bime-no-Kami (principal deity of the Outer Shrine at Ise), forming a lineage of food-deities. His principal head shrine is Fushimi Inari Taisha in Fushimi, Kyoto, where, according to the Yamashiro Fudoki itsubun (lost-text fragment), the Hata clan first enshrined him on the three peaks of Mount Inari in Wado 4 (711 CE). From the medieval period he was identified with Dakini-ten in Buddhist syncretism, and from the early-modern era he was widely invoked as the household deity of merchant houses.