Ikutamayoribime

• • Period: Legendary Period
  • Occupation: –
  • Family: Ōkuninushi (husband) Suyetsumimi (father) Kushimigata (son) Ohotataneko (son?)
  • Birth: –
  • Death: –

Ikutamayoribime

Ikutamayoribime (活玉依毘売) was a woman who became pregnant from Ōkuninushi and together they had Kushimigata (ancestor to Ohotataneko²³). It is said she was the daughter of Suyetsumimi.¹²³

The kojiki tells us that she became pregnant but did not know who the father of her child was as the kami came in the middle of the night. The reason he came due to her beauty.

Her parents believed she had concieved by herself but saying she had not they devised a way to find out who the father was. They instructed her to sprinkle red earth infront of the couch and pass a skien of hemp through a needle and to piece the skirt of a garment.

In the morning the needle pointed towards the way the kami had entered and left her home. And so following the needle the ended up on Mount Miwa finding Ōkuninushi there.²³

The nihongi says her child with Ōkuninushi was Ohotataneko¹, but the kojiki says he was a descendant through her son Kushimigata.²³

Footnotes

1. Aston. W.G. (1896) “Nihongi Volume 1: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to AD697”. Tuttle Publishing.
2. Yasumaro. O, translated by Gustav Heldt. (2014) “Kojiki. An Account of Ancient Matters”. New York: Columbia University Press.
3. Chamberlain, B. H. (1932) “Translation of the Kojiki.” Kobe: J.L. Thompson & Co.

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