Ukemochi
goddess of food in the Shinto faith
Ōgetsu-hime (大宜都比売神/ 大気都比売神/ 大宜津比売神/ 大気津比売神, Ōgetsu-hime/ Ohogetsu-hime-no-kami), commonly known as Ukemochi (保食, Ukemochi; Deity Who Protects Food; Old Japanese: 保食, romanized: Ukamoti), the daughter of the deities Izanagi and Izanami, is a goddess of food in Japan and appears as a dema deity. Ukemochi is referred to as both male and female in different contexts. When shown in other forms, Ukemochi takes the shape of a fox.
Ōgetsu-hime/Ukemochi is married to Hayamato-no-Kami (羽山戸神), the son of Toshigami through his wife Amechikarumizu-hime (天知迦流美豆比売) in the Kojiki, making Hayamato her great-grandnephew through her brother Ōyamatsumi. In some legends, Ukemochi is also married to Inari Ōkami; in others, she is Inari.
According to the Kojiki, after Susanoo-no-Mikoto was banished from heaven, he asked Ōgetsu-hime to give him food, and she did so by producing various food items from her nose, mouth and rectum. Thinking that she had poisoned the food by doing this, Susanoo killed her. After she died, silkworms grew from her head, rice seeds grew from her eyes, millet grew from her ear, azuki grew from her nose, wheat grew from her genitals, and soybeans from her rectum. After her death, one of the three primordial creator deities, Kamimusubi, took seeds from her body and planted them in the ground.
Another version of the myth features Ōgetsu-hime by her more common name, Ukemochi.
“Ukemochi” enters the record as goddess of food in the Shinto faith. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ukemochi, goddess and food can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ukemochi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.