Amaterasu, the Japanese goddess of the sun and the universe, does not rule like a typical supreme deity. Instead of hurling thunderbolts, she retreats, negotiates, and delegates. Drawing on the eighth-century Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, this deep dive treats her mythology as a narrative biography, from two very different birth stories, one born from Izanagi washing away the pollution of the underworld and one born radiant and sent up a ladder to heaven, through her break with the moon god Tsukuyomi after he killed the food goddess, and the transformation of that goddess's body into rice, wheat, silkworms, horses, and cattle.

The heart of the story is her conflict with the storm god Susanoo, whose escalating destruction of her rice fields and weaving hall drives her into the heavenly rock cave and plunges the cosmos into darkness. The gods coax  ...