Literally Star-Crossed

Question: Hi! I know the Amatsukami rewrite is some time away but I was curious about something. I've heard that Izanagi is a kami associated with the stars as well as the sky, and the myth of Tanabata is a retelling of his doomed affair with Izanami. Is there anything in your research that would indicate that's true?

Well, it is possible that some people might consider Izanagi a stellar deity. In Japanese myth, the stars were created by Izanagi when he drew the heavenly spear out of the earth at the creation of the world and flung the clots of mud clinging to it into space, so he has a connection to stars in that he created them. We wouldn't consider it a strong enough association to make him a star god, really, though, considering that Izanami also helped with the spear-creations and that Izanagi presumably created everything else that exists in Japan at the same time and we wouldn't think of him as a god of Fertility or Water or Earth, either.

As for the mythology surrounding Tanabata, that's actually imported from China, where it's the well-known tale of the Weaver's Daughter and Cowherd's Son, Zhi Nu and Niu Lang; in at least one version, Zhi Nu is the daughter of the Jade Emperor and the saga is played out as a conflict between celestial gods, although in other places it's a folktale of two mortal lovers kept apart by a Romeo & Juliet style family feud. Tanabata is the Japanese name for the goddess, who is patroness of weavers, while Hikoboshi is the Japanese name of her cattle-aligned counterpart. Kept apart by the decree of her father or whatever other outside forces a given retelling of the myth chooses, the two lovers can meet only once per year, when the stars Altair and Vega that represent them line up.

But we've never heard of Tanabata and Hikaboshi being cognates of Izanami and Izanagi, and we don't know of any reason they'd be connected. Izanagi and Izanami have no similar connotations to the two formerly Chinese gods other than the very tenuous stellar connection of being creator gods, and furthermore the mythology doesn't line up; nobody ever forbade them to get together and in fact their pantheon encouraged them, and once Izanami died and Izanagi failed to retrieve her, there was definitely no interest on either of their parts in having a romantic once-a-year tryst even if they could. You could definitely call their relationship a "doomed affair" if you want to, but it's in no way a similar one to that between Tanabata and Hikoboshi.

However, that doesn't mean the Tanabata myth can't do neat stuff in Japan. You might be able to do some cool stuff with what these Shen are doing being so prominent in Japanese myth and whether or not they're seeking some kind of asylum from their pantheon there, and it might also be interesting to remember that Amaterasu is also a goddess with weaving connotations. She isn't a star goddess, but she and her brother and former consort Tsuki-Yomi are both heavenly deities that inhabit the sky but never touch, and there might be something you could mess with in that parallel situation.