Japanese Gods and Goddesses

Japanese gods are called kami (神), the deities and sacred presences of Shinto. They include the sun goddess Amaterasu, the storm god Susanoo, the rice deity Inari, and the thunder god Raijin, along with several figures imported from Buddhism. Japanese tradition speaks of yaoyorozu no kami, eight million kami, meaning uncountably many.

Before the List

Three things make Japanese deities behave differently from a Greek or Norse pantheon.

First, the sources. Almost everything in the classical mythology comes from two books written for the imperial court: the Kojiki, completed in 712, and the Nihon Shoki, completed in 720. Both were compiled partly to establish that the emperor descended from the sun goddess. They are myth and political argument at once.

Second, the borders leak. Several of the figures below are not Shinto at all. Benzaiten, Daikokuten, and the Buddhist forms of Fujin and Raijin arrived from India by way of China, and Japan absorbed them so completely that most people would be surprised to hear they were ever foreign. A kami is defined by awe, not by passport.

Third, and most usefully for a traveler: nearly every deity here has an address you can walk to.

The Gods at a Glance

The Creators

Izanagi

Izanagi-no-Mikoto (伊邪那岐命) stands on the floating bridge of heaven with his wife and stirs the ocean with a jeweled spear. The brine dripping from the tip becomes the first island. The two then produce the Japanese archipelago and a long line of kami. When Izanami dies and he fails to retrieve her from the land of the dead, he returns polluted and washes in a river, an act that founds Shinto purification and produces his three greatest children. Izanagi Jingu on Awaji Island, the first island they made, is often called Japan’s oldest shrine.

Izanami

Izanami-no-Mikoto (伊邪那美命) is his wife and co-creator, and her story turns very dark. She dies giving birth to the kami of fire. Izanagi follows her into Yomi, the underworld, and breaks his promise not to look at her. Seeing her decayed, he flees, and she pursues him in fury. He seals the entrance with a boulder, and she vows to kill a thousand people a day. He answers that he will cause fifteen hundred to be born. Death and birth are set in balance in that exchange.

The Three Noble Children

Amaterasu

Amaterasu Ōmikami (天照大御神) is the sun goddess and the senior figure in the whole tradition. Born from Izanagi’s left eye, she withdrew into a cave after her brother’s violence and took the daylight with her, until a mirror and an obscene dance drew her out. Japan’s imperial line claims descent from her, and her sacred mirror is kept at Ise. Read the full story on our page for Amaterasu.

Tsukuyomi

Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto (月読命) came from Izanagi’s right eye and rules the moon and the night. He is the great absence of Japanese myth. In the Nihon Shoki he kills a food goddess in disgust at the way she produces a meal, and Amaterasu refuses to look at him again, which is offered as the reason day and night are forever separated. Then the texts largely drop him. He is enshrined at Tsukiyomi-no-miya, a sub-shrine of Ise Jingu’s Naiku.

Susanoo

Susanoo-no-Mikoto (素戔嗚尊) is the storm, born from Izanagi’s nose. He is impossible in heaven and heroic on earth. After being expelled for wrecking Amaterasu’s realm, he descends to Izumo, finds a family weeping over a daughter about to be devoured, gets the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi drunk on eight vats of sake, and cuts it apart. Inside its tail he finds the sword Kusanagi. Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto’s Gion district enshrines him, and its summer festival, Gion Matsuri, began in 869 as a plea to stop an epidemic.

The Weather Pair

Raijin

Raijin (雷神) is the thunder god, drawn as a fierce, demon-bodied figure crouched in the storm clouds inside a ring of drums, which he strikes to make thunder. He is one of the most vivid images in Japanese art. Our full page covers his drums, the folk warning about children’s navels, and his descendants in video games: Raijin.

Fujin

Fujin (風神) is the wind, and Raijin’s constant partner. He runs across the sky with an enormous bag of wind slung over his shoulders, loosing gales from its mouth. The two are almost never depicted apart. Their most famous portrait is Tawaraya Sotatsu’s gold-leaf folding screen Fujin Raijin-zu, a National Treasure held by Kennin-ji in Kyoto.

The Gods of Getting By

Inari

Inari Ōkami (稲荷大神) is the deity of rice and, by extension, of every kind of prosperity. Foxes are Inari’s messengers, which is why stone foxes guard the entrance to some thirty thousand Inari shrines nationwide. See Inari for the foxes, the torii tunnels, and why companies still keep private Inari shrines on their roofs.

Ebisu

Ebisu (恵比寿) is the only member of the Seven Lucky Gods actually native to Japan. He is shown as a plump, laughing fisherman with a sea bream under one arm and a rod in his hand, and he governs fishing, harvests, and fair dealing in trade. Nishinomiya Shrine in Hyogo is his head shrine, and its Toka Ebisu festival every January 9 to 11 ends with a footrace to the main hall at six in the morning to determine the year’s “lucky man.”

Daikokuten

Daikokuten (大黒天) began as the ferocious Indian deity Mahakala and arrived in Japan transformed into a smiling figure in a flat cap, standing on two bales of rice with a treasure sack over his shoulder and a magic mallet in his hand. He rules wealth, harvests, and kitchens. Because his name could also be read as Okuninushi, the great kami of Izumo, the two merged. Kanda Myojin in Tokyo enshrines him alongside Ebisu, which is why the shrine is packed with businesspeople every January.

Benzaiten

Benzaiten (弁財天) is the goddess of music, eloquence, water, and everything that flows, descended from the Indian river goddess Saraswati. She carries a biwa lute, and her shrines are almost always on islands or beside water. Enoshima Shrine near Kamakura, one of Japan’s three great Benzaiten sites, tells how she tamed a five-headed dragon by agreeing to marry him only if he protected the local people instead of terrorizing them.

Warriors, Scholars, and the Sea

Hachiman

Hachiman (八幡神) is the deity of archery and war, identified with the legendary Emperor Ojin, and the patron of the samurai. More than 40,000 Hachiman shrines stand across Japan, which puts him among the most widely enshrined kami in the country. The head shrine is Usa Jingu in Oita, whose worship hall was built in 725, and where worshippers clap four times rather than the usual two. Tsurugaoka Hachimangu in Kamakura, founded by the Minamoto clan, is the shrine most visitors will actually see.

Tenjin

Tenjin (天神) is the deified spirit of Sugawara no Michizane, a real scholar and poet exiled by court rivals, who died at Dazaifu in 903. Plague, storms, and lightning strikes on the palace followed, and the court concluded it had angered him. He was enshrined to calm him, and over the centuries the vengeful ghost mellowed into the patron of learning. Every exam season, Dazaifu Tenmangu in Fukuoka fills with wooden plaques from students, under more than six thousand plum trees.

Ryujin

Ryujin (龍神), also called Watatsumi, is the dragon king of the sea, who rules the tides with a pair of magic jewels from a coral palace called Ryugu-jo on the ocean floor. He is the reason so many Japanese dragons are water creatures rather than fire ones. The folk tale of Urashima Taro, the fisherman who rides a turtle down to that palace and returns to find centuries have passed, is his most famous appearance.

Ame-no-Uzume

Ame-no-Uzume (天鈿女命) is the goddess of dawn, dance, and unembarrassed joy. Her wild, comic dance outside the rock cave made the assembled kami laugh so hard that Amaterasu opened the door to see what she was missing, which is to say that the sun came back because somebody made a scene. She is regarded as the origin of kagura, Shinto’s sacred dance, and is enshrined at Tsubaki Grand Shrine in Mie alongside her husband Sarutahiko.

Meeting Them in Person

Every deity above is enshrined somewhere you can walk into, and none of those places require you to share the belief.

Pause and bow before you pass under the torii. Keep to the side of the path rather than the middle, which is left for the kami. Rinse your hands at the water basin. At the offering hall: a coin, two deep bows, two claps, a silent moment, one final bow. At Izumo Taisha and Usa Jingu, make that four claps instead of two.

Then buy an omamori if you like, or write a wish on an ema plaque and hang it with the others. Check the shrine’s official website for current hours and festival dates before you travel, since these change.

FAQ

Who is the main god in Japanese mythology?

Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess, holds the highest position in the classical texts and is the ancestor claimed by Japan’s imperial line. She is enshrined at Ise Jingu. In everyday practice, though, Inari is the deity most people actually encounter, with roughly thirty thousand shrines nationwide.

How many Japanese gods are there?

There is no fixed number. Japanese uses the phrase yaoyorozu no kami (八百万の神), the eight million kami, which is idiomatic for countless. New kami continue to be recognized, and many are known only in a single valley or village.

Are Japanese gods Shinto or Buddhist?

Both, and the line is blurry by design. Amaterasu, Susanoo, and Inari are Shinto kami. Benzaiten and Daikokuten arrived from Indian Buddhism, and Fujin and Raijin appear in Japan as guardians of Buddhist teaching. For over a thousand years the two systems were worshipped together, and the government only separated them by decree in 1868.

Who are the Seven Lucky Gods?

A group of deities of good fortune, the Shichifukujin, that includes Ebisu, Daikokuten, and Benzaiten from this list. Only Ebisu is native to Japan. The rest come from Chinese and Indian traditions, and they are usually shown together aboard a treasure ship.

Which Japanese god should I visit first?

If you have one day in Kyoto, Fushimi Inari Taisha at dawn is the most striking introduction. If you have one day in Tokyo, the Kaminarimon at Senso-ji puts Raijin and Fujin at eye level. If you are building a trip around it, Ise Jingu is where the tradition considers its own heart to be.