When Amaterasu heard this, she was very wroth with her brother, and sent a second messenger to see if the Food-Goddess were really dead. And when he found her, behold, a miracle! All things good for man were growing from her head and body. Millet and grass, mulberry trees with silkworms on them, rice and wheat and large and small beans. The messenger took them all and presented them to the Sun-Goddess, who rejoiced greatly and gave them to mankind, rice for the wet fields and other grains for the dry. And she planted the mulberry trees on the fragrant hills of heaven, and chewed the cocoons of the silkworms, and spun thread to weave silk garments for the gods. Now, one day, while she was weaving with her maidens in the sacred hall, word was brought to her that her brother had trampled the rice fields and polluted her storehouses. And when she sought to excuse him he angered her yet more by his folly and violence. So Amaterasu covered her face, and in her grief and anger she hid herself from the sight of all men in a rocky cave, and closed the door. When her radiance was hidden, all the world was left in deep darkness and confusion, the whole plain of heaven was obscured, and the Land of the Reed-Plains darkened. Night and day were unknown, and neither in heaven nor earth was there any light at all. The sound of many voices rose and fell, like the swarming of bees, and everywhere was trouble and dismay. In the midst of the gloom the eighty myriads of gods met together in council, and their meeting-place was on the banks of the Milky Way of Heaven. And the Great Wise God, wiser than his fellows, who held in his mind the thoughts and imaginings of all men, said softly: “She is a woman, and surely will be curious. Let us show her something more beautiful than herself!” But as in all High Heaven nothing fairer could be found, they made a mighty mirror, forged by the Blacksmith God from the metals of heaven. Yet the gods were not satisfied, and commanded him to make another. So with his anvil from the Milky Way, and bellows, fashioned from a single deer-skin, he forged a second and yet a third, and this last was perfect and flawless, in shape like the Sun. And they lit great fires outside the cave and hung the mirror there on the branches of the sacred Sakaki tree, above it a necklace of ever-bright and glittering jewels, and below it some strips of fine-woven cloth. Then the Wise God took from his fellows six long bows and bound them together, and placed them upright in the ground and gently brushed the strings.