Yata no Kagami

Also Known As: 八咫鏡; “the eight-ata mirror”, an *ata* being the span of a hand; also written Yata-no-Kagami, and known simply as the Sacred Mirror, one of the three imperial treasures called the Sanshu no Jingi
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Japanese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: It shows a viewer her own face and nothing else, and that plain property is enough to draw the sun out of hiding and to stand in for a goddess afterwards.
Role in Mythos: It is the instrument that ends the world’s first night and then becomes the token of the sun goddess’s presence among her descendants, the senior object of Japan’s imperial regalia.
Relation to Humans: Amaterasu gave it to her grandson with the charge that he should treat it exactly as he would treat her, which made a piece of polished metal the resident deity of a ruling house. Ordinary people never see it, and neither, so far as any record admits, does anybody else.

The world had gone dark and stayed dark, and on the dry stones of the Tranquil River of Heaven the eight hundred myriad gods stood about in the cold, arguing. Somebody sent for iron. It came down out of the metal mountains of the sky, and a smith named Ama-tsu-mara worked at it alongside a goddess called Ishikoridome while the assembly waited to see whether a plan could be beaten into shape. What came off the anvil was a disc, worked and polished on one face until it held the light that nobody had seen for days. That is the Yata no Kagami, and it is still, in theory, in Japan.

Its name is a measurement, and no two readers have ever agreed on what it measures. An *ata* is the span of a hand. Basil Hall Chamberlain, translating the Kojiki, rendered the name as the eight-foot mirror and defended the reading against all comers. Motoori Norinaga argued the eight referred to heads or corners, making the thing octagonal. Moribe thought it pointed to an eightfold flowered pattern running round the rim. There is a marginal note in the old text telling the reader to pronounce it *ya-ata*, which is the kind of correction that only survives because people kept getting it wrong.

The metal is no better settled. The Kojiki says plainly that iron was fetched from the heavenly mines. The main narrative of the Nihon Shoki declines to say what the mirror was made of at all, while one of the variant accounts it preserves says gold. A third early text says copper, which is a problem, because copper was not found in Japan until the eighth century. Most modern descriptions call it bronze, which is what an early Japanese ritual mirror generally was. Nobody offering any of these answers has seen the object.

It was made for a rescue. Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, had taken fright at her brother’s violence and shut herself behind the stone door of a cave, and the high plain of heaven and the country beneath it both went black. The gods did not try to force the door. They built a scene instead. A sakaki tree with five hundred branches was pulled up by the roots from Mount Kagu and stood before the entrance. The long string of curved jewels went on the high branches, white and blue cloth offerings on the low ones, and the mirror was tied into the branches in the middle, where it turned slowly on its cord and caught nothing at all.

Then the noise started. A stag’s shoulder blade was scorched over cherrybark for divination, Ame-no-Koyane recited a liturgy, Futodama stood holding the offerings, and Ame-no-Uzume put an overturned tub in front of the cave and danced on it until it boomed, working herself into something close to possession and losing most of her clothing in the process. The gods laughed hard enough to shake the floor of heaven. The door opened a crack. Amaterasu asked what could possibly be funny in the dark, and Uzume told her there was a deity present more glorious than herself. Koyane and Futodama pushed the mirror forward into the gap. The sun goddess looked at the bright thing, did not recognise it, came further out to see better, and Ame-no-Tajikarao, who had been standing flat against the rock the whole time, took her by the hand and pulled. A rope was drawn across the mouth behind her so she could not go back in.

That is the whole of its power. It reflects. It does not burn, cut, heal, or speak, and it worked on the sun goddess for the same reason a mirror works on anyone, by showing her something she wanted a closer look at. The oldest Japanese account of a divine artefact turns on vanity and good staging.

It was not, apparently, right the first time. The Kogo Shūi, a ninth-century compilation of traditions the official chronicles had passed over, records that the mirror failed to satisfy and had to be forged again. The Chronicles preserve the other half of that story: a mirror cast by Ishikoridome before this one went south to Kii, where it is enshrined at Hinokuma to this day. The sacred object of a dynasty was a second attempt.

When Amaterasu sent her descendant down to govern the islands, she gave him the mirror along with the curved jewel and the sword Kusanagi, and she sent the mirror’s maker with it. The words she used, in Aston’s translation of the Chronicles, were these: when thou lookest upon this mirror, let it be as if thou wert looking on me. Let it be with thee on thy couch and in thy hall. Koyane and Futodama were told to stay beside it and guard it well.

They kept it in the palace for generations, which the record treats as a mistake. Under the emperor Sujin the mirror was judged too powerful to live alongside, and it was carried out and handed to his daughter Toyosukiirihime, then later to Yamatohime, who took it from place to place until a voice settled the matter by naming Ise. It has been at the Inner Shrine since. A substitute was made for the palace sanctuary, and it is the substitute that travels in a covered car when a new emperor is enthroned. In 1040 the compartment housing the sacred mirror caught fire. The reports say the mirror came through it.

The limits are the interesting part. A mirror lures, it does not compel, and everything it achieved at the cave depended on other gods doing the shouting, the dancing and the pulling. It can be flawed in the forging, misplaced in a palace, moved from province to province, burned around. And it cannot be examined. It sits wrapped at Ise where no visitor goes and no photograph exists, so the one claim the object makes for itself, that looking at it is the same as looking at the goddess, is also the one claim nobody is allowed to test.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Yata no Kagami?

The Yata no Kagami is a sacred mirror and the senior item of Japan’s imperial regalia, the Three Sacred Treasures. It was made in the myth to draw the sun goddess Amaterasu out of the cave she had sealed herself into, and it later became the token of her presence among her descendants. Its name means roughly “the eight-ata mirror”, an *ata* being the span of a hand.

Who made the Yata no Kagami?

The goddess Ishikoridome made it, with a heavenly smith named Ama-tsu-mara at the forge and iron brought down from the metal mountains of the sky. The Kogo Shūi records that the first attempt was unsatisfactory and the mirror had to be forged a second time. The earlier, rejected mirror is said to be enshrined at Hinokuma in Kii province.

How did the mirror get Amaterasu out of the cave?

The gods hung it in the middle branches of a sakaki tree in front of the cave, then staged a loud celebration outside the door. When Amaterasu opened the door to ask what the laughter was about, Ame-no-Uzume told her a greater deity was present, and Ame-no-Koyane and Futodama pushed the mirror into the gap. Amaterasu came out to look at her own reflection and was pulled clear by Ame-no-Tajikarao.

Where is the Yata no Kagami now?

It is held at the Inner Shrine of Ise, in Mie Prefecture, where it has been since the reign of the emperor Suinin according to the traditional account. It is not displayed and no modern description of it exists from sight. A replica kept in the palace sanctuary in Tokyo stands in for it at court ceremonies.

What is the Yata no Kagami made of?

The sources disagree. The Kojiki says iron, one variant in the Nihon Shoki says gold, another early text says copper, and most modern accounts call it bronze, which is the usual material for an early Japanese ritual mirror. Since the object has never been examined, none of these answers can be confirmed.