The first of the seven generations of the age of the gods. In the Kojiki he appears after the five distinguished heavenly kami and hides himself as a solitary god. His name means that the land stands forever.
The Nihon Shoki places him differently. There he is the first god to appear at the parting of heaven and earth, and the three gods of creation do not figure in the main text. Two works compiled in the same era name different kami as the first in the world.
The discrepancy is not a copying error. The Kojiki begins the world from the gods of heaven, the Nihon Shoki from the god of the land. Which is placed first is a statement about how the world is understood.
This Bureau follows the Kojiki for the order of rank because it is the Kojiki that is arranged as a genealogy — not because the order in the Nihon Shoki is wrong.
The Yoshida school of the medieval period set this kami at the summit as the root deity of the cosmos. He was held in high regard by the later revivalist school and by modern new religions — like Ame-no-Minakanushi, a god who grew afterwards.
What the chronicles say of him is close to a single line. Onto that line a thousand years piled meanings.
The permanence of the land; origin. He is enshrined at Tamaki Jinja in Nara and Jonangu in Kyoto, among others, and often at shrines in the Yoshida lineage.
A stick that was rooted in the ground: part of a thick root still attached, wood that lay so long on the earth that its shape has settled into it, heavy without being immovable.
The Bureau sends this kami down on a stick that feels as though it had stayed in one place. Where Ame-no-Tokotachi withstands time, this kami stays in a location. The same phrase — standing forever — means different things in heaven and on the land.
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.