Omoikane's Other Role: Sent Down With the Divine Grandson

Omoikane's part in luring Amaterasu from her cave is not his only documented role in the Kojiki. Donald Philippi's standard scholarly translation identifies Omoikane's genealogy separately from that episode, naming him son of Takamimusubi, a creative deity whose own line runs alongside rather than through Amaterasu's, which places Omoikane within a second strand of the heavenly genealogy distinct from the sun goddess's direct descendants. The Kojiki gives him a further, later role in the Tenson Korin, the divine descent that sends Ninigi to found the imperial line: Omoikane is named among the deities charged with deliberating on and arranging the descent itself, an advisory office consistent with the counsel-giving character the cave episode already establishes for him, applied here to a different and later event in the same chronicle. The Encyclopedia of Shinto, produced by Kokugakuin University's own Shinto studies program, records this pattern as consistent with Omoikane's standing office across the mythology generally, the deity the other kami turn to for a plan whenever one is needed, so his presence at the descent is not an isolated second appearance but the same established role exercised again at a different and later point in the Kojiki's own chronicle.