The last of the five distinguished heavenly kami to come into being, appearing after Umashiashikabihikoji and, like the others, hiding himself as a solitary god.
His name means that heaven stands forever. It is a name given less to a personality than to the fact that the condition called heaven continues.
No deeds are told of him either. But where Ame-no-Minakanushi gave a name to the centre, this kami gives a name to duration.
Immediately after the world begins, what Japanese myth names is not an event but a state. That there is a centre, and that it continues — the first five kami handle only those two things. The story has not started yet.
All five of the distinguished heavenly kami are solitary, without partners. Only when the seven generations begin do gods come into being as male and female pairs, and only then do generation and story begin.
A kami without a partner does not give birth, and in exchange does not change. That these five stay hidden and never enter the narrative can be read as a statement that what does not change cannot become a story.
The permanence of heaven. Shrines to him alone are very few; he usually appears in the list where the gods of creation or the five heavenly kami are enshrined together.
Though his name is almost never spoken, this kami has never dropped out of the opening paragraph of the Kojiki. To be worshipped and to be recorded are two different things, and that is precisely why a register of kami is worth keeping.
A stick that has not changed: one that must have lain outdoors a long while and is neither rotted nor split, and looks as though it will hold the shape it had on the day it was found.
The Bureau sends this kami down on sticks that are withstanding time. If Izanami is the kami of the stick that is ending, this is the opposite pole — a stick with no sign of ending at all.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.