The Firstborn Heirs

Question: In Japanese mythology, according to the origin myth, Izanagi and Izanami first have two kids when walking around the pillar the wrong way. The first one is Hiruko and the second Awashima. There is some mention of Hiruko eventually surfacing later as a minor god, but I was wondering if there was any other mention of Awashima.

Yep, the two original children of Izanagi and Izanami are all but stricken from the rolls of the Kami. It's not actually the direction that the two deities walked around the pillar that is incorrect, but the fact that Izanami spoke to her husband first. This, according to the Kojiki, was against the natural order of things, so their marriage was tainted and their children cursed. They had to repeat the ceremony, this time with Izanagi speaking first, to straighten it out and be able to be fruitful as deities. Alas for poor Izanami - all she said was, "Wow, you're so handsome!" to her new husband, but that's what happens in ancient mythology when women think they get to be in charge of their own actions.

Alas also for these poor kids, who didn't do anything wrong but were still eternally condemned by their mother's totally unacceptable desire to think she was allowed to talk before a dude gave her permission. Hiruko - whose name means "leech", and who is therefore usually referred to as the Leech Child - was born deformed, unable to stand on his own even when he was three years of age. Various traditions have interpreted this as meaning that he was born without bones, making him a gross, leech-like jelly creature, while others read his name as possibly suggesting that he has no arms or legs, making him even more of a wormy sort of being. When they realize that the kid is never going to be able to play soccer or administer the universe, his parents put him in a boat and shove him off like a tiny unwanted Moses leech into the celestial ocean.

Hiruko never comes back, and in earlier Shinto scriptures it doesn't seem that he was intended to; he's gone because he was impure and unnatural, which in the purity-focused Japanese religion means that he must be removed. However, he was much later syncretized with the figure of Ebisu, one of the Seven Lucky Gods; the boating gods of good times and fun parties likewise come from the sea, and while the rest of them are Chinese imports, Ebisu is the only one said to have originated in Japan. A weird-looking little god, deaf and physically handicapped, who came back from parts unknown in a boat - it's not hard to see why the idea that he might be Hiruko returned sprang up and became so powerful.

But you're really more interested in Awashima, the second child, who is also considered a failure but whose problems are not actually described in the Kojiki. "Awashima" literally means "island of Awa", or possibly "pale island" from the word awai, meaning "pale"; Izanami and Izanagi also created the islands of Japan after correcting their first marriage attempt, and there are a few small Japanese islands called Awa, so it may be that the myth refers to the pair giving birth to a landmass. If that's so, it's hard to tell why that island was a disappointment to everyone, since the real-world islands are pretty normal places.

There's also an Awashima Shrine in the Wakayama prefecture which has a resident protector deity commonly referred to as Awashima or the kami of Awashima; the kami is a female deity who is in a perpetual state of "womens' problems" that make her miserable, and therefore she is banished to the shrine to keep her away from the other kami (probably because things like menstruation are considered impure) and spends her time trying to help ease the suffering of other women when they have uniquely female problems. We don't have any indication that this is necessarily the same Awashima, but if it is, presumably the fact that she's afflicted with lady-issues would be the reason that she was kicked off the official god-roster by her disgusted parents, and her backstory of being banished by the other gods might be a later version of the old story of the original two children being considered failures to be done away with. This second Awashima isn't attested in either the Kojiki or the Nihon Shoki, but is rather a popular figure in shrine worship in that particular part of Japan.

For most Scion games, Awashima probably isn't going to come up very much, considering that s/he vanished immediately after being born in the Shinto scriptures and never comes up again. However, if you want to play with where the missing second child might be - not to mention doing what, and associating with whom - there are a couple of possibilities for folding the lost deity in to the rest of Japanese mythology.