, the Buddhist deification of the
North Star and/or the
Big Dipper There is no extant undisputed record of Ame-no-Minakanushi being worshiped at any known ancient shrines (the
Engishiki, compiled in the early 10th century, never mentions any shrines to this deity); this, combined with the lack of information concerning the god outside of documents associated with the imperial court such as
Kojiki and the
Shoki (as seen above, even in these texts, barely any mention is made of this god), has led some scholars to consider Ame-no-Minakanushi to be an abstract deity (i.e. a god that only exists on paper, with no actual worshipers or
cult dedicated to him) created under the influence of
Chinese thought. Other scholars, however, argue that the paucity of evidence for the worship of Ame-no-Minakanushi in antiquity does not necessarily mean that the god is purely a literary invention.
Konishi Jin'ichi (1984) saw the creation narratives of the
Kojiki and the
Shoki as a combination of three different traditions: one which traces the origin of the gods to Ame-no-Minakanushi, another that began with Umashi-Ashikabi-Hikoji, and a third one starting with Kuni-no-Tokotachi. He saw similarities between Ame-no-Minakanushi and the
sky deities Tangaloa (
Polynesian mythology) and
Tengri (
Turkic and
Mongol mythology), suggesting that these myths may ultimately share a common origin.
Kawai Hayao compared Ame-no-Minakanushi with the moon deity
Tsukuyomi and
Hosuseri (one of
Konohanasakuyahime's three children), in that all three are portrayed as belonging to a triad of important deities and yet are not recorded as doing anything of significance. He considered these three
'inactive' deities to serve a mythic function as the 'hollow center' acting as a buffer zone between two opposite or conflicting forces (Kamimusubi and Takamimusubi,
Amaterasu and
Susanoo,
Hoderi and
Hoori).
During the medieval and early modern periods Until the medieval era, the
Nihon Shoki, owing to its status as one of the
six national histories, was more widely read and commented upon than the
Kojiki, which was regarded as an ancillary work. In a similar vein, the
Sendai Kuji Hongi, due to its preface claiming it to be compiled by
Prince Shōtoku and
Soga no Umako, was seen as being earlier and more reliable. (Modern consensus holds the
Kuji Hongi to actually have been compiled during the
Heian period, although certain portions of it may indeed preserve genuine early traditions.) References to Ame-no-Minakanushi were thus solely in terms of his role as one of the primeval
kami. It was upon the flourishing of nativist studies (
kokugaku) and the rediscovery and reappraisal of the
Kojiki in the
Edo period that Ame-no-Minakanushi's significance was reevaluated,
Tsurumine Shigenobu (1788-1859), who attempted to make a rational interpretation of the creation myths of the
Kojiki and
Shoki based on a synthesis with his understanding of European science and astronomy, associated Ame-no-Minakanushi with
gravity: By linking gravity to Ame-no-Minakanushi, Tsurumine identifies the deity as the "lord" who oversees the process whereby the activity of the two gods of "coalescing" (
musubi) results in the creation of all things out of the basic elements represented by "particles." Using language apparently borrowed from
Christian conceptions of
God, Tsurumine then went on to describe the three deities of creation as "the ancient ancestral
kami of heaven and great
kami sovereign over first origins ... who have made all things, from sun and moon, the planets, and earth to every other thing." Motoori's admirer and self-proclaimed disciple
Hirata Atsutane, in contrast to Motoori, described Ame-no-Minakanushi as a supreme deity with no beginning and no end who holds sovereignty over all existence, residing in the
pole star at the very center of heaven. A number of Hirata's disciples, meanwhile, came to formulate different understandings of Ame-no-Minakanushi from their mentor. One such disciple,
Mutobe Yoshika (1798-1864), for instance argued that all the stars in the sky have their own
planetary system similar to the
Sun; the
Kojiki's description of the generation of heaven and Earth thus does not refer to the entire cosmos as Hirata interpreted it, but the
Solar System (which Mutobe equates with the mythical Takamagahara) alone. According to Mutobe, all the stars with their respective planetary system were formed by the three deities of creation, who then came down to dwell in the Solar System. Unlike Hirata, Mutobe relegated Ame-no-Minakanushi and the other two deities of creation to a minor role and instead accorded high status to the earthly deity
Ōkuninushi, who he argued was given jurisdiction by the gods Takamimusubi and
Amaterasu not only over the lives and fates of human beings but also over grains and other foods. He thus took the evaluation Hirata had given to the three
kami of creation and reapplied it to Ōkuninushi, essentially elevating him to a kind of supreme deity. ==Worship==