Chup Kamuy

Chup Kamuy is the Ainu luminary-deity, the kamuy of the heavenly lights: as tokap-cup 'the day luminary' she is the sun and as kunne-cup 'the night luminary' the moon. The dictionary of Batchelor records cup as the word for sun, moon and month alike. The classic aetiological narrative — that the moon-deity, unwilling to witness human wrongdoing in the dark, exchanged places with the sun — is recorded variously with the two luminaries as siblings (in the switch) and, in the modern tabulation, as the sun-goddess Tokapcup and the moon-god Kunnecup; the figure is authored here as the unified luminary-kamuy with no attested divine parent. Flagged SOLITARY: the sources give the sun/moon pairing as two aspects/partners of the one luminary rather than a kinship to the rest of the pantheon.

Domains

• sun
• moon
• sky

Powers

• Light the world as the sun by day and the moon by night
• Exchange places between sun and moon to avoid the sight of human wrongdoing
• Look down upon and witness the deeds of humankind

Sources

• John Batchelor, An Ainu–English–Japanese Dictionary (1905), s.v. cup, tokap-cup, kunne-cup
• Michael Ashkenazi, Handbook of Japanese Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2003)
• John Batchelor, The Ainu and Their Folk-Lore (1901)