A Goddess Who Bears Fire

        The earthenware vessels above were excavated in Nagano Prefecture, belonging to the Jomon Chuuki (the Middle Stage). Sot, oil stains and burns inside and outside prove that they were used as a lamp, and apparently were used hung down by their hangers.  There are several lamps of similar designs excavated in other Jomon Chuuki sites. This type of lamp is named "earthenware with a hanger". Archaeologists have concluded this type was used at rituals, as itsbody is covered with elaborate patterns.and the number of lamps of this type so far found is by far smaller than that of other lamps of simpler designs. Unlike broken clay dolls, most of them were excavated whole, which tells they were treated carefully.
        As you see, they have a female face at the top, and the bodies show they are pregnant, so when fire was lit at rituals, they were women who were carrying fire in their body.
        It is very interesting to note that people from East Asia through islands on the South Pacific Ocean to America had and have the same type of goddesses in their myths. Again, as I did when I wrote about "Broken Clay Dolls", I'd like to quote from the books by Professor Atsuhiko Yoshida, whose theories I find most fascinating and convincing.
        Professor Yoshida introduces similar myths of a goddess told among several tribes, in which she bears fire and her fire becomes available to human beings.
        First, in Japanese mythological books, Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, there appears a goddess named Izanami, who gave birth to a fire god Kagutsuchi after she had borne Japanese Islands and many gods and goddesses. and passed away because of the burns she got during the bearing.
        A Melanesian tribe on Trobriand Island has a story about a goddess who is the mother of the sun and the moon as well as fire. She lives with her younger sister, and they live on wild yam potato the younger sister gathers. While the elder one sleeps peacefully every night after eating her yam cooked on fire she hides in herself, the younger one eats it raw and has a bad night with coughing. One day the younger sister pretends to go out looking for yam and hides herself in the house. She sees her elder sister take out fire from between her legs and cook yam. Knowing that her secret was out, the elder one suggests that the secret be kept to themselves and they monopolize fire. But the younger sister has a different idea and sets fire on many trees so that all human beings can use it. Thus, the fire taken out from between the legs of the mother goddess of the sun and the moon in the ancient times has spread over the world and all people can have cooked food now.
        A tribe in the southern part of Guyana in South America, Tarma, also has a similar story about the origin of fire. There lived only two brothers, Agigeco and Duido, living on the earth at the genesis of time. One day an otter told the brothers that they had to fish up a woman from a chasm at the bottom of a river if they want her. The younger brother Duido fished the woman up while Agigeco was sleeping tired from fishing for a few days. Duido achieved the woman and they became the parents of all the human beings. Soon the brothers found that the woman ate only cooked food whereas they ate everything raw. They asked her, but she wouldn't tell them how she could cook food.  One day, after many years had passed, Agigeco visited his brother's house. As soon as he left the house for home late in the afternoon, he noticed he had forgot his bag and asked his brother's wife to bring the bag to him. Agigeco asked her to come closer to hand it to him, and when she came to him, he caught her and said that if she didn't tell him how to cook food, he would rape her. So she sat down with her legs wide open and pressed her belly hard. Then a fireball rolled out of her birth canal. At first Agigeco couldn't use the fire, as it had lost its magic when it left the woman, but he mixed pepper, bark and nuts with the fire and made it burn.
         An anthropologist Taira Ohbayashi also refers to many more myths where a goddess bears fire, spreading widely in many areas. According to Ohbayashi, fire comes out from between legs on the Newguinea Islands; from the vagina in North Australia; from all parts of woman on the Marquises Islands (Polynesia); from woman's fingers in New Zealand; from woman's body in North Brazil; and from the vagina in Guyana.
         The range of places where these myths are told corresponds to that of Hainuwele myths in which food comes out of a goddess's body. All important things for human beings to survive, such as food and fire, were born from woman, Jomon people as well as people in other regions in ancient times thought.