Reading Diary A: Japanese Mythology

For my first reading diary this week, I read the first half of the Japanese Mythology unit.  I loved reading about Amaterasu, especially because one of my favorite video games, Okami, is based partly around Amaterasu's interaction of the Eight-Forked snake (called Orochi in the game).

A lot of the game mirrors the legends around Amaterasu.

In the game, she is in the form of a wolf and carries a sun disk, a weapon, on her back.  The disk can also be changed out for a chain of beads (resembling the precious stones of the necklace Amaterasu is given by her father in the legends) or a sword.

The legends describe Amaterasu as sitting at a loom with her handmaidens and weaving people's fates; in the game - Amaterasu uses the Celestial Brush, in her wolf form this is her tail, which she uses to control the various natural forces around her (making the sun or moon rise, making flowers or trees bloom, controlling wind and fire and water, and even slowing time).

One of the main plots of the game is to defeat Orochi, the eight-headed demon whose arrow marks the house of the young girl who's to be sacrificed to him.  Amaterasu, with the help of a cast of characters, defeats Orochi by getting each of the eight heads drunk off of a specially brewed sake - just like in the legends.  Also just like the legends, on Orochi's back, is a large garden with a temple bell; each of Orochi's heads has control over an element: dark, earth, fire, light, lightning, poison, water, and wind.

Amaterasu vs. Orochi [x]