1st
appearance: Thor #300AMATSU-KAMI
1st
appearance: Thor #300
Known Amatsu-Kami: Amaterasu, Ame-No-Mi-Kumari, Bishamon, Hotei Osho (Ho Ti), Inari, Izanagi, Izanami (Gaea), Kaminari, Mikaboshi (Ama-No-Kagaseo), Susanoo, Takamimusubi, Tsuki-Yomi
Base of Operations: Ama (extradimensional realm)
History: Before the gods existed, various elder gods and demons ruled Earth for millions of years. After they were finally destroyed by the Demogorge, two deities rose from the ruins: Izanagi, the progenitor and leader of the Amatsu-kami, and his wife, Izanami. The couple parented numerous naturalistic deities of the wind, sea and land, but Izanami died giving birth to Kagu Zuchi, a fire spirit. In anger, her husband split the child in two and dozens of new Amatsu-kami sprang from the child’s form before it regenerated itself. Izanami descended below the Earth’s surface where she remained despite her husband’s pleading that she return, forcing him to fear her dead form and devote himself to creating and protecting life on the surface. It is believed that Izanami was actually the elder goddess Gaea, also known as Yo, who mothered the senior deities of Earth’s pantheons and resides within the Earth itself.
Izanagi kept his vow of renewal and created three new Amatsu-kami: sun goddess Amaterasu, moon god Tsuki-Yomi and high-spirited storm god Susanoo; these gods in turn gave birth to others. Izanagi chose to remain in Ama, the realm of the Japanese deities, allowing his daughter and her eventual husband, Takamimusubi, to rule more actively for him. After Ama-No-Hashidate, the “bridge of heaven” that tied Ama to Earth, was destroyed under revealed circumstances, Izanagi rarely returned to Earth.
When the alien Celestials threatened the Earth, Izanagi attended the Council of Godheads’ meeting to discuss this threat. Shortly thereafter, the various pantheons’ senior goddesses developed their own plan to empower a new race of Young Gods through whom the Celestials could study and appreciate Earth; Amaterasu helped watch over the candidates. When the gods’ confrontation with the Celestials ended in Asgardian leader Odin’s death, Gaea presented the Amatsu-kami’s candidate (female Japanese farmer Chi Lo, later known as Harvest) and the other candidates to the Celestials, who were appeased. In the aftermath, Izanagi willingly gave of his own power to help Thor restore Odin and Asgard. Izanagi has occasionally attended other Council meetings in recent years (in other realities, alternate Izanagis have attended Councils opposing Seth, among others).
The god of evil, Amatsu Mikaboshi (aka Ama-No-Kagaseo) recently acquired Kusanagi, the mystical Grasscutter Sword. The storm god Susanoo claims to have first found the Grasscutter Sword within the body of an eight-headed serpent; after it was gifted to his sister Amaterasu, the magical sword served several heroes over time, finally resting for centuries in a heavily guarded temple for safekeeping before the Asgardian gods Thor, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg freed it. The Asgardians subsequently failed to safeguard it, and it eventually ended up on Earth where the Hand, a cult of assassins sought it but were stopped by Black Axe, Sunfire, Daredevil and others while Mikaboshi ultimately claimed the sword.
Armed with the weapon, Mikaboshi conquered Yomi (the underworld) and its demons, using these to destroy many of the kami and absorb their powers. The survivors fled from Ama or went into hiding (Hotei Osho, one of the seven gods of happiness, took refuge in China as Ho Ti), and Mikaboshi sought to conquer the Olympian gods. He kidnapped Alexander Aaron, the son of their war god Ares, and led the son to try to usurp his father’s mantle as Olympian war god. Ares ultimately brought his son to his senses, and the messenger gods of the two pantheons, Mercury (Olympian) and Inari (Japanese), tricked the Greeks and surviving Japanese into allying despite their pride; the combined efforts of the water deities Poseidon and Ame-No-Mi-Kumari flooded Mikaboshi’s underworld, defeating him. Ame-No-Mi-Kumari survived the battle, as did Izanagi, Inari, Bishamon (god of war and happiness) and Kaminari (goddess of thunder), but which other Amatsu-kami have survived and what course they plan to take remains to be seen.
Traits: The Amatsu-kami are the celestial and ancestral deities of the Japanese people. Human in form and exceedingly long-lived, the average Amatsu-kami has skin and bone twice as dense as human, can lift 10 to 20 tons, is immune to most natural diseases, and possesses superhuman endurance. Though weaker than Asgardian and Olympian deities, they have proportionately faster reflexes. Most Amatsu-kami possess one or more “godly” abilities such as storm control, shape-changing or flight.
The Amatsu-kami generally reside in Ama, an extradimensional realm formerly attached to Earth by the Bridge of Heaven (Ama-No-Hashidate), later cut free. Other kami (divine spirits) also reside on Ama and on Earth, including both guardian spirits and gods of the land (Kunitsu-kami). Various demons and devils (tengu) who have adopted Japanese forms also reside in Japan, Ama and Yomi, the underworld. It is believed that time passes differently in the godly realms.
