Amaterasu: Light of the Heavens

Almost every sun god in human history has been male. Japan's is a woman. Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess at the heart of Shinto, is one of the very few female suns in world mythology, and the one whose worship still endures today. For more than a thousand years she has been honored as the divine ancestress of the Japanese imperial line, the world's oldest continuous monarchy. Her story runs from the eighth-century chronicles that first recorded it, through the medieval centuries when Buddhism recast her as a cosmic buddha, to the modern state that made her a goddess of empire, and on to the games and anime that carry her name around the world today. Amaterasu: Light of the Heavens tells that whole story: the myth of the goddess who hid in a cave and darkened the world, the great shrine at Ise that is torn down and rebuilt every twenty years, and the long argument over who Amaterasu has been and what she means now. For readers of Japanese mythology, history, and religion who want the whole story and the real history beneath it.