Yata no Kagami (八咫鏡)

It is said that the gods of Takamagahara gathered on the banks of the Heavenly Tranquil River, using the hard stones of the upper stream as an anvil upon which to hammer and forge. Born from iron, will, and divine breath, the mirror was used as a lure — a means of drawing a god back out into the world while the sun goddess Amaterasu had shut herself away in the rock cave and darkness reigned. A mirror made not to reflect, but to beckon — and when one considers this, its purpose may not have changed at all.

Some say that *yata* (八咫) is nothing more than an old epithet meaning simply "great" or "manifold." Yet when the circumference is calculated, a diameter of some forty-six centimetres emerges — a circumference of roughly one hundred and forty-seven — figures that align precisely with the large floral-patterned bronze mirror unearthed from the Hirabaru burial site, dated to the late Yayoi period. When archaeology and myth quietly converge like this, even the language of scholarship seems to tremble.

Today, two mirrors are said to exist. One rests deep within the inner shrine at Ise as the sacred object itself; the other, kept in the Imperial Palace, is a *shintai* substitute — a replica fashioned in the likeness of the original. Neither has ever been shown to the public. Records indicate that Emperor Meiji viewed the original once, after which it was returned to the innermost sanctum. What he felt upon seeing it has never been recorded.

The inner shrine is said to have suffered several fires throughout its history. The archaeologist Harada Dairoku (原田大六) pored over those records and wrote in his work that the Yata no Kagami in existence today may well have been remade anew after the original was lost to flame. If that is so, then what rests there now is not the mirror of the beginning, but a copy of something that no longer exists — a substitute modelled on a substitute, a mirror reflected in a mirror.

The mirror bears another name: Mafutsu no Kagami (真経津鏡). The meaning of *mafutsu* remains unsettled to this day. Some hold that *ma* (真) denotes purity, and *futsu* (経津) the power of sacred words; others interpret it as "that which passes the soul through." Not what the mirror reflects, but what the mirror transmits — that question has yet to find anyone who can answer it.