Shinto

Susano-o in Drag?

It is my theory that the dancing Amenouzume (Heavenly-Alarming-Female) was in fact Susano in drag. In probably the most famous sequence in Japanese myth Amenouzume performs a strip tease dance on top of an over-turned barrel. This has the effect of making the assembled gods laugh. Amaterasu who is hiding in a cave, hears the laughter outside and thinks, “This isn’t right. They should not be laughing with me hidden in here.” So the sun goddess opens the door to the cave a little and asks, “How come you are all laughing.” At which point a god replies, “someone as beautiful as you is with is,” and shows her a mirror. Seeing the mirror Amaterasu thinks that there is indeed another god as beautiful as herself outside and opens the door to the cave a little further, a which point a very strong god drags her out all the way, and another strings shimenawa behind her so that she cannot go back in. The evidence to support the theory that Amenouzume is Susano-o in drag is as follows:

1) Susano-o is absent from this portion of the myth even though he was the culprit. It was he that upset Amaterasu to the point were she went into the cave in the first place. It seems appropriate, therefore, that he should do something about it. 2) The dance raise such *laughter* when normally when real women strip tease the reaction is more of saliva, panting, and stares. In the Kojiki real-female nakedness is often regarded as being scary. So why did all the gods laugh? Perhaps they were laughing at Susano-o 3) Amenouzume "pulling out the nipples of her breasts." This seems to be a rather un natural action for anyone to do but it might be explained if one imagines a man doing a comic impersonation of a naked woman. 4) Amenouzume pulls her clothes down to her private parts, but does not seem to take them off entirely. Perhaps because if she had pulled here clothes down all the way she would have given the game away that she was really a man. 5) Amenouzume is the origin of Kagura - Shinto dance and later Noh that developed out of Kagura. And Kagura figures Susano-o prominently since it is of the Izumo region. 6) I saw a Kagura (sacred folk Shinto dance) rendition of this myth where the dancers were male. No surprises here since all the dancers are male but it drew a laugh from the assembled watchers precisely because of the fact that it was a man doing the "sexy" strip tease. 7) The sun goddess was definitely tricked here. She was tricked into thinking that there was someone else as beautiful as she outside. As mentioned in my article about hair, trickery in the Kojiki often seem to revolve around cross dressing. 8) Amaterasu may be *in a sense* the refection of Susano-o, as I will argue in a later post. So it seems appropriate that Susano-o should pretend to be her, as Amenouzume. It is clear that Amenouzume is pretending to be the sun goddess since the gods say that "there is someone as beautiful as you out here" before showing the sun goddess the mirror. The biggest problem with this theory is that Amenouzume is seen later in the myth. She is the god that escorts Sarutahiko to Izumo and is said to be one of the ancestors of the Saruta tribe.