Yasakatome

Yasakatome (八坂刀売神) is a kami in Shinto. She is worshipped in the Suwa Taisha network of shrines. She is the wife of Takeminakata and most often considered to be the deity of the Lower Shrine of Suwa or the Shimosha. Unlike the relatively well-documented Suwa Kamisha, very little concrete information is available regarding the origins of the Shimosha and its goddess. At Suwa Taisha Takeminakata is enshrined at Hon Miya and Yasakatome is enshrined in Mae Miya. Yasakatome's first historical attestation is in the Shoku Nihon Kōki, where the goddess is given the rank of junior fifth, lower grade (従五位下) by the imperial court in the tenth month of Jōwa 9 (842 CE), five months after the same rank was conferred on Takeminakata. She is not found in the Kojiki or the Nihonshoki. As Takeminakata rose up in rank, so did Yasakatome, so that by 867 CE, Yasakatome had been promoted to senior second (正二位). The goddess was finally promoted to senior first rank (正一位) in 1074 (Jōhō 1). Regarding her genealogy, according to the records of Kawaai Shrine in Kitaazumi District, Yasakatome was a younger sister of Utsushihikanasaku and the daughter of the god of the sea Ōwatatsumi which has been seen as hinting to a connection between the goddess and the seafaring Azumi clan (安曇氏). There is also a theory that Yasakatome was alternately the daughter of Ame no Yasakahiko (son of Nagashiraha no Kami, the sixth-generation descendant of Kamimusubi), a god recorded in the Sendai Kuji Hongi as one of the 32 guardians dispatched by Takamimusubi to defend Ninigi's elder brother Nigihayahi when the latter received the command to descend from Takamagahara aboard the ship Ame no Iwafune. However this theory of Yasakatome being the daughter of Yasakahiko is considered an unreliable conjecture from the Edo period...