Born From an Eye, Exiled From the Sky: Tsukuyomi and the Death of Uke Mochi

Tsukuyomi is the moon kami of Japanese mythology, born from Izanagi's right eye during the purification ritual the creator god performed after his failed attempt to retrieve Izanami from the land of the dead. Along with Amaterasu, born from the left eye, and Susanoo, born from the nose, Tsukuyomi is counted among the three noble children, the most exalted of all the kami Izanagi produced. Beyond this account of birth, Tsukuyomi has a strikingly thin independent mythology compared to his siblings, but the one major story attached to him, told in the Nihon Shoki, is a pointed one. Sent to visit the food goddess Uke Mochi, Tsukuyomi watched her produce a lavish meal by turning to face the land, the sea and the mountains and disgorging rice, fish and game from her mouth, and in his revulsion at food produced this way he killed her on the spot. When Amaterasu learned what her brother had done, she was so appalled that she declared she never wished to see his face again, and from that day the sun and moon kami have never shared the sky, which the myth offers as the explanation for why day and night remain permanently separated. No comparable act of violence is recorded of either of his siblings toward a fellow kami, which makes Tsukuyomi's one substantial myth also the harshest, and it is this single episode, more than any sustained narrative, that defines his character across the whole of the surviving textual tradition.