Takachiho Yokagura Legend

The Takachiho Yokagura is a village kagura tradition of Takachiho in Miyazaki that takes as its core the rock-cave episode of the Kojiki (712 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE). When Amaterasu-Omikami withdraws into the heavenly rock-cave after Susanoo's violence and the world is plunged into darkness, Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto dances in trance before the cave; as the door opens a crack, Ame-no-Tajikarao-no-Kami pulls Amaterasu out. The thirty-three numbered dances are performed through the night in kagura houses across the village between November and February at the harvest thanksgiving season. The sequence has three parts: invocation and purification, the rock-cave core (Tajikarao, Uzume, Totori, Maibiraki), and the closing offering and send-off. The cycle was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property in 1978 as 'Takachiho no Yokagura'. The principal sites are Takachiho Shrine, Amano Iwato Shrine and Aratate Shrine, spread across more than twenty kagura villages in Nishiusuki-gun. Sources include the upper scroll of the Kojiki, the age-of-the-gods seventh section of the Nihon Shoki, the shrine records of Takachiho Jinja, the Cultural Affairs Agency designations and the Takachiho township history.