Ame-no-Nuboko

Also Known As: Japanese 天沼矛 in the Kojiki, 天之瓊矛 in the Nihon Shoki, “heavenly jewelled spear”; the heavenly jewelled spear in Basil Hall Chamberlain’s 1882 Kojiki, the jewel-spear of Heaven in W. G. Aston’s 1896 Nihongi; also read Ame-no-Nuhoko and Ama-no-Nuhoko, and given the further name Ama-no-Sakahoko in the Digital Daijisen dictionary
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Japanese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: Pushed into the unformed sea and drawn up again, it let fall the brine that piled up into Onogoro, the first island.
Role in Mythos: It is the instrument the gods of heaven hand to Izanagi and Izanami so they can begin making the land of Japan.
Relation to Humans: No mortal ever holds it, since it does its work before there is any ground for people to stand on. Everything the Japanese chronicles go on to describe, the islands, the gods born on them and the people who come later, begins with the island that dripped from its point.

The first land in Japanese myth was not raised from the deep, dug out or hammered flat. It dripped. Two gods stood on a bridge hung between heaven and a sea that had not yet settled into anything, pushed a spear down into the brine, stirred, and lifted it clear. What ran off the point piled up into an island. That spear is Ame-no-Nuboko, the heavenly jewelled spear, and its whole career lasts about as long as it takes to tell.

Two eighth-century chronicles record it. The Kojiki, finished in 712, gives the fuller scene. There all the Heavenly Deities summon Izanagi and Izanami, the Male-Who-Invites and the Female-Who-Invites in Basil Hall Chamberlain’s 1882 translation, and order them to “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land.” The spear is handed over with the order. It is equipment, issued for a job.

The job is done from the Floating Bridge of Heaven. The pair push the spear down and stir, working the salt water until, in Chamberlain’s rendering, it goes “curdle-curdle”, a thick, clotting churn against the shaft where a moment before there was only loose, heavy sea. Then they draw the spear back up.

Brine runs down the length of it and gathers at the tip. The drops fall, salt-heavy, one after another, and where they land they heap, and the heap stays. This is Onogoro, whose name Chamberlain gives as “Self-Curdling”. The two gods climb down onto the new ground, raise a heavenly pillar and a hall of eight fathoms, and begin the courtship from which the islands of Japan and a crowd of gods are born.

The Nihon Shoki, completed in 720, tells it more hesitantly. In its main text nobody gives an order at all. Izanagi and Izanami stand on the floating bridge of Heaven and talk it over among themselves, asking whether there is not a country somewhere beneath them. They thrust down the jewel-spear and, groping about with it, find the ocean. The brine that drips from the point coagulates into Ono-goro-jima, which the pair make the pillar of the centre of the land. The chronicle then lays out its alternative tellings, each introduced with “in one writing it is said”. In one, the gods of Heaven name the land to be ordered, the Toyo-ashi-hara-chi-i-wo-aki no midzu-ho, the country of the fresh rice-ears, and hand over the spear. In another the pair form the island by groping with it. In a third they simply scrape the island together. Same spear, four different movements of the wrist.

What it looked like is almost entirely a matter of one syllable. The Kojiki writes the name with characters that, read as Chinese, would mean something quite different, since the first of them is borrowed for its sound. Chamberlain took that sound, nu, to be an old word for “jewel” or “head”. The Nihon Shoki settles the matter in its own way by writing it with a character for a precious stone. Even so, Chamberlain warned that “jewelled” is often a word of praise and nothing more, a way of calling a thing beautiful, while the Edo-period scholars Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane took it literally. So the spear is either set with jewels or it is simply a very fine spear. Nobody records its length, its metal or its weight in the hand. Nobody made it, either. It arrives from the gods of heaven, and neither chronicle says where they had it from.

That silence left room for later readers. Hirata conjectured that the spear was shaped like a wo-bashira, a male pillar with a jewelled top, and when Aston translated the Nihon Shoki in 1896 he set that reading beside another, drawn from O’Neill, which treated the spears of myth as symbols of the earth’s axis. Aston thought the two readings could sit together. The chronicles themselves offer no gloss. They give a spear, a stir and a drip, and move on.

The island it made has been placed on the map. Both Chamberlain and Aston record the identification of Onogoro with a small islet off Awaji, the island at the eastern end of the Inland Sea, so the spear’s one piece of handiwork is supposed to lie in real water.

Its power is odd when looked at closely. The spear does not strike, cut or guard anything. It does not even make land by stirring. The Kojiki is careful on this point: the island comes from what drips off the tip once the spear is drawn up, so the making happens in the lifting. The stirring prepares the brine and the dripping builds the ground, and both need the hands that hold it and the bridge those hands stand on.

Its limits are just as plain. The spear makes one island and no more. The rest of Japan is not stirred out of the sea but born, from the union of the two gods on that first patch of curdled ground, and the spear has no part in it. In both chronicles its story ends at Onogoro.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Ame-no-Nuboko?

Ame-no-Nuboko is the heavenly jewelled spear of Japanese mythology. In the Kojiki (712) and the Nihon Shoki (720), the gods Izanagi and Izanami use it to stir the primordial sea, and the brine that drips from its tip forms Onogoro, the first island.

Who gave the spear to Izanagi and Izanami?

In the Kojiki, all the Heavenly Deities give Ame-no-Nuboko to Izanagi and Izanami along with an order to make and consolidate the drifting land. In the main text of the Nihon Shoki nobody hands it over, and the two gods simply use it, although one of that chronicle’s alternative versions has the gods of Heaven give it to them.

How was Onogoro Island created with Ame-no-Nuboko?

Izanagi and Izanami stood on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, pushed Ame-no-Nuboko down into the brine and stirred. When they drew the spear back up, the brine dripping from its tip piled up and became the island of Onogoro. The two gods then went down onto the island and began the union from which the islands of Japan were born.

Why is Ame-no-Nuboko called a jewelled spear?

The name contains the old word nu, which Basil Hall Chamberlain read as “jewel”, and the Nihon Shoki writes it with a character for a precious stone. Chamberlain noted that “jewelled” can also be simple praise meaning beautiful, while the Edo-period scholars Motoori Norinaga and Hirata Atsutane took it to mean real jewels. Neither chronicle describes the spear further.

What happened to Ame-no-Nuboko after the creation of Onogoro?

Neither the Kojiki nor the Nihon Shoki says. Ame-no-Nuboko makes only the first island, Onogoro, and the rest of Japan is born from the union of Izanagi and Izanami, so the spear’s story ends once that island exists.