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The Small Kami Who Helped Shape the Land

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The Small Kami Who Helped Shape the Land

Sukunabikona (Sukuna-hikona) is a diminutive Japanese kami who, in the myth of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, arrives from across the sea, a tiny god riding the waves in a pod-boat, clad in feathers or moth-skin, to become the partner of Okuninushi in the making and ordering of the land. Together the great earthly kami and his small companion are credited with laying the foundations of the country, and Sukunabikona is honoured as a god of healing and medicine, of hot springs, of sake-brewing, of agriculture, and of magic and knowledge.

When his work of nation-building is done, the myth relates, he departs, crossing to the eternal land (Tokoyo) beyond the sea, vanishing as suddenly as he came. Despite his small stature, or because of it, he is a significant figure in the myth of creation and a widely invoked patron of medicine and of brewing, enshrined in that capacity at a number of shrines.

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