Amaterasu, Susanoo, Izanagi: Japan's Oldest Book Is Weirder Than You Think

A goddess dies giving birth to fire. A god runs from the land of the dead. The sun goddess pops out of her father's eye. And according to Japan's oldest surviving book, that goddess is the ancestor of Japan's imperial family. Most Japanese people learn these names at school... and that's about it. This is where SHIMA starts: what the Kojiki is, how strangely it came to be written, and three ideas inside it that still shape how Japan thinks — told by a Japanese creator, with a few honest notes from the inside. Start here — Episode 1, the birth of Japan:    • HOW JAPAN WAS BORN | Izanagi & Izanami, th...   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 0:00 Japan's oldest book is weird 0:36 Even most Japanese don't know it 0:55 How the Kojiki got written 2:52 Three ideas inside the Kojiki 3:58 Word of the day: yaoyorozu 4:41 Do Japanese people believe all this? 5:32 Still alive today: Ise and Miyajima 6:32 You know these names from anime 6:51 Start here ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A NOTE ON SOURCES The Kojiki's preface says Emperor Tenmu had Hieda no Are learn the corrected records by heart, and that Ō no Yasumaro wrote them down in 711–712 under Empress Genmei. Whether Hieda no Are was a man or a woman is not settled by the sources. Motoori Norinaga's commentary, the Kojiki-den, took him from 1764 to 1798 and runs to 44 volumes. "Yaoyorozu" literally reads "eight million" and means "countless." The "From Japan" segments are the creator's own experiences, read by an AI voice. Narration and voices are AI-generated. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IMAGE CREDITS Photographs via Wikimedia Commons: ・"Mitarashiba of Naiku01.jpg" by Tawashi2006 (CC BY-SA 3.0), cropped and upscaled ・"Hananoiwaya Shrine01.jpg" by Tawashi2006 (CC BY-SA 3.0) ・"Hananoiwaya Rope flag.jpg" by Hiyotchi (CC BY-SA 4.0) ・"DSC_0264 (3525495559).jpg" by Marufish (CC BY-SA 2.0) ・"Grand torii of Munakata Grand Shrine (Hetsu Shrine) 2.jpg" by そらみみ / Soramimi (CC BY-SA 4.0) ・"Okinoshima viewing 01.jpg" by Indiana jo (CC BY-SA 4.0) ・"Miyajima- Part I - Miyajima464.jpg" by lumoplank (CC0) ・"Itsukushima Shrine at high tide.jpg" by JohnnyOneSpeed (CC BY-SA 3.0) ・"20100723 Miyajima 5116.jpg" by Jakub Hałun (CC BY-SA 4.0) Licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ MUSIC OpenTracks (opentracks.com): MFP【Marron Fields Production】, 神楽坂源次郎, 蒲鉾さちこ, えだまめ88, 秦暁, こーち, shimtone Sound effects: OtoLogic (https://otologic.jp) — CC BY 4.0 Kabuki call "Japanese yo 5short" by Vilaa2404 (Freesound) — CC BY: https://freesound.org/people/Vilaa240... Other voice effects: Freesound (CC0) All illustrations are original artwork created for this channel. Naruto, Persona and Ōkami are mentioned by name only; this channel is not affiliated with their creators or publishers. #JapaneseMythology #Kojiki #Amaterasu