The Kami Who Guided the Descent from Heaven

Sarutahiko (Sarutahiko Okami) is an earthly kami (kunitsukami) of Japanese myth, remembered above all as the deity who guided the descent of the heavenly grandchild. When Ninigi, grandson of the sun-goddess Amaterasu, came down from Heaven to rule the land, the mythic charter of the imperial line, it was Sarutahiko, a towering, long-nosed, ruddy figure of imposing appearance, who stood at the crossroads of Heaven and earth and led the way.

For this he is honoured as a god of guidance, of roads and crossings and of new beginnings, and is invoked for safe travel and for the auspicious opening of undertakings. In the myth he afterwards marries the kami Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess whose dance had earlier helped draw Amaterasu from her cave. His striking appearance links him in the popular imagination to the long-nosed tengu and to the masked figures who lead festival processions, and he is enshrined at Tsubaki Grand Shrine and elsewhere as a guardian of the way.