{"id":626,"date":"2007-02-21T15:27:24","date_gmt":"2007-02-21T19:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=626"},"modified":"2007-02-21T15:27:25","modified_gmt":"2007-02-21T19:27:25","slug":"the-japanese-goddess-of-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=626","title":{"rendered":"The Japanese Goddess of Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m doing a three page story for the Wide Awake Press<\/a> Free Comic Book Day comic.  The book’s going to include work by Duane Ballenger, J Chris Campbell, Andrew Davis, Justin Gammon, Josh Latta, Pat Lewis, Brad McGinty, Rich Tingley, Rob Ullman and me.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the theme of the work is food<\/i> and I was looking around for some food-related legends, folk tales and whatnot to maybe illustrate for the book and I stumbled on a pretty amazing Japanese legend.  I think it’s just way too gross to do for this book, and I’m planning instead to do a 3-pager on the origin of the hushpuppy, but you gotta dig the imagery of this goddess vomiting up fish for the sea and game for the land–and then the moon god getting so grossed out that he just straight-up kills her:<\/p>\n

\n

According to the legend, the moon god, Tsukiyomi, was
\ndispatched to earth by his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu, to visit Ukemochi
\nno Kami (Goddess of fertility and food). The food goddess welcomed him by
\nfacing the land and disgorging from her mouth boiled rice, turning toward the
\nsea and spewing out all kinds of fishes, and turning toward the land and
\ndisgorging game. She presented these foods to him at a banquet, but he was
\ndispleased at being offered the goddess\u2019s vomit and drew his sword and killed
\nher. When he returned to heaven and informed his sister of what he had done,
\nshe became angry and said, \u201cHenceforth I shall not meet you face to face,\u201d
\nwhich is said to explain why the Sun and Moon are never seen together.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I wouldn’t have done this second section as part of the comic, but here it is:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/span>Another messenger
\nsent to the food goddess by Amaterasu found various food stuffs produced from
\nher dead body. From her head came the ox and the horse; from her forehead,
\nmillet; from her eyebrows, silkworms; from her eyes, panic grass (a cereal);
\nfrom her belly, rice; and from her genitals, wheat and beans. Amaterasu had the
\nfood grains sown for humanity\u2019s future use and, placing the silkworms in her
\nmouth, reeled thread from them, thereby beginning the art of sericulture – the
\nproduction of raw silk.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m doing a three page story for the Wide Awake Press Free Comic Book Day comic.  The book’s going to include work by Duane Ballenger, J Chris Campbell, Andrew Davis, Justin Gammon, Josh Latta, Pat Lewis, Brad McGinty, Rich Tingley, Rob Ullman and me. Anyway, the theme of the work is food and I was … <\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p46veT-a6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}