Japan Through Food

Long before sushi, ramen, or tempura, the people of Japan told a much darker story about where food came from.

In one of Japan’s oldest surviving myths, rice, soybeans, wheat, millet, and other things essential to human life emerge from the body of a slain goddess.

To modern ears, the story may sound strange—even disturbing.

But it raises a fascinating question:

Why did the people who preserved this ancient story imagine food emerging from death?

To explore that question, we have to travel back more than 1,300 years, to two of Japan’s oldest surviving texts: the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.

A Goddess Who Produced Food from Her Body

In the Kojiki, compiled in 712, the storm god Susanoo encounters a goddess named Ogetsuhime, a deity associated with food.

Ogetsuhime prepares a meal for him in an extraordinary way. She produces food from her nose, mouth, and rectum, carefully prepares it, and offers it to Susanoo.

But Susanoo sees what she has done and interprets it very differently. Believing that she has served him food in a filthy and insulting manner, he becomes furious—and kills her.

What happens next transforms this violent episode into a story about the origins of food itself.

From Ogetsuhime’s dead body, the foods essential to human life begin to appear.

Silkworms emerge from her head. Rice comes from her eyes. Millet grows from her ears, red beans from her nose, wheat from her genitals, and soybeans from her buttocks.

Death, in other words, becomes the source of nourishment.

Another Food Goddess, Another Death

But this was not the only ancient Japanese story that connected food with death.

In the Nihon Shoki, completed in 720, a similar story appears—but this time, the consequences reach far beyond food.

Amaterasu, the sun goddess, sends Tsukuyomi, the moon deity, to visit Ukemochi, another goddess associated with food.

Ukemochi prepares a feast for her guest by producing food from her own body.

Tsukuyomi is disgusted by what he sees. Believing the method to be impure and offensive, he kills her.

Once again, food emerges from death.

From Ukemochi’s body come animals, silkworms, rice, millet, wheat, soybeans, and red beans.

When Amaterasu learns what Tsukuyomi has done, she is furious and declares that she will no longer see him.

In the myth, this separation explains why the sun and moon do not normally appear together—why day follows night, and night follows day.

A story about food becomes a story about the order of the universe itself.

Why Does Food Emerge from Death?

At first, these myths may seem shocking. Why would food—the very thing that sustains life—come from the body of a dead goddess?

One way to understand the story is to look at agriculture itself.

A seed is buried in the earth. It disappears from sight. Then, from what seems lifeless, something new begins to grow.

Rice, wheat, millet, and beans all follow this cycle. They are planted, harvested, consumed, and planted again.

For people whose lives depended directly on the harvest, the boundary between death and new life may have felt very different from the way many of us experience it today.

The myths of Ogetsuhime and Ukemochi turn that cycle into a dramatic story: life comes from death, and food connects the two.

Food, Life, and Death

More than 1,300 years after these stories were written down, rice, soybeans, wheat, and other grains remain part of everyday life in Japan.

Most people eating a bowl of rice or a serving of tofu today probably never think of Ogetsuhime or Ukemochi.

Yet these ancient myths remind us that food has never been only about eating. Perhaps that is what makes these strange and violent stories still worth telling today.