Wakka-us Kamuy

Ainu · deity · primordial · deity

Wakka-us Kamuy ('the deity possessed of water'), also called Pet-ru-ush-mat 'watering-place woman', is the Ainu goddess of fresh water — of the springs, streams and river-valleys on which the kotan depended. Ashkenazi (Handbook of Japanese Mythology, p. 283) describes her as a long-haired woman, a skilled dancer and singer, sympathetic to humankind and petitioned to intercede with other kamuy. The famine-feast kamuy-yukar is her signature myth: summoned by Okikurmi, she convenes the kamuy of the rapids, fish and game, the hunt-goddess Hasinaw-uk and the land-overseer Kotan-kar-kamuy, and by her dancing, singing and pleading wins back the salmon and deer that the offended kamuy had withheld because the humans had not observed the proper killing-rites. Authored as a deity with no attested divine parent.

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