This episode we finish the  tale of Susano'o, including who he slew the giant beast, Yamata no Orochi, and thus saved Kushinada Hime, who would become his wife.   We talk about how, back on earth, Susano'o plays the part of the culture hero, rather than the wild and destructive god of the Heavenly Plains.  What is going on with that?  And just how deep is Susano'o's connection to Izumo?

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-16

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 16: Susano’o Slays the Serpent… and does a bunch of other stuff. 

Now, before we get going, I’d like to quickly thank Corine for their support via KoFi.  Every little bit helps us pay for the costs of keeping this going and obtaining access to the books and articles that we use to put all of this together.

As for content warnings—I think we are good for this episode; even the procreation is pretty tame and straightforward in this one. So you should be okay unless you have a problem with violence against mythical giant monster serpents, in which case, this might not be the episode for you.  Sorry, Jörmungandr—come back next episode.

So for now we are going to continue with the story of Susanowo, after he left Takama no Hara.  Of course, on the surface, it wouldn’t seem like there should be much there.  Remember, he had been exiled down to Ne no Kuni, and had just finished saying farewell to his sister, Amaterasu.  That had been a lengthy and, ultimately, disastrous affair that had led him to be fined, punished, and finally exiled from the Heavenly plain.  So now Susanowo descends to earth and will eventually make his way to the underworld—the land of his deceased mother—but as with the Heavenly Plain, he takes his sweet time getting there and does plenty of other stuff along the way.  I swear, he’s like little Jeffrey from Family Circus, able to go just about anywhere except a straight line.  And if we had that little dotted line map it would run through Izumo Province, Aki Province, Kii Province—even out to the Korean Peninsula and back.  It’s crazy. 

So anyway, Susanowo descened from the Heavenly Plain and landed somewhere in the general vicinity of Japan.  We’ll talk about the different areas of where he is said to have landed—and why that matters—and then look at what he did there.  Now in some cases he has children with him—by whom it is not mentioned, but there you are—and in some cases he arrives by himself.  In at least one he plays the part of Johnny Appleseed, planting all manner of trees as he traverses the land.

Eventually he comes to a river, and at that river he runs into an old couple and their daughter, who is bound to be eaten by a giant, eight-headed serpent.  Of course, this being a heroic tale, he slays the serpent, gets the girl and saves the day.  He apparently settles down for a while, builds a house, has a family, and then, FINALLY, he leaves for Ne no Kuni.

It’s like he’s the hero in one of those old console RPGs, where there is supposedly some big thing he has to do *right now*, but he’s off making sure that every cave has been searched and every vase has been broken before he moves on to the next cut scene.  And who can blame him, really?

So we’ll take a look at this story—really several stories—and try to unravel some of what is going on.  We’ll also put up some more information on the website, sengokudaimyo.com/podcast—some of the things that we found to be pretty neat but that might not fit neatly in the podcast itself.

In the end, I hope that we can really see how this Susanowo is quite different from the Susanowo of the last episode.  The Heavenly Jerk is now an Earthly Hero.  We’ll also talk about some theories regarding Susanowo’s role as a god of Izumo—specifically in his relationship to rain and agriculture.  We’ll discuss his connections with Izumo, seen not only in the Kiki but also in the Izumo Fudoki, and try to tease out a little more information that will inform out later discussions of the Izumo-Yamato relationship.

So let’s get into it

Alright, so we know that Susanowo came down from the Heavenly Plain to the earthly realm, but right off the bat we are confronted with a conundrum, as, you see where he lands, exactly, is something of a debate, even within the Chronicles.  In several stories he arrives  directly at the headwaters of a large river in the Izumo area, yet in another account in the Nihon Shoki, as well as in the Kujiki, he arrived all the way over in Silla, on the Korean peninsula.  Let’s look at this version for a minute, as it raises a couple of interesting points.

In this version, Susanowo arrives in Silla with his son, Isotakeru no Kami, at a place called Soshimori—or possibly Sorimori--and it was is only after spending some time there that he and his son hopped in a boat made out of clay—not exactly your typical shipbuilding material—and made their way to Japan and eventually up to Izumo and the Hi River.  As they went, at least in the Johnny Appleseed version, they planted trees from seeds they had taken from the Heavenly Plain, making the mountains green with life from Tsukushi onwards.

There are two somewhat important pieces of information that this version of the story gives us about Susanowo.  For one, there is his arrival in Korea—combined with other information that we’ll get to, this has led some to assume that Susanowo isn’t native to Japan, and that he may, in fact, have been a banshin, or foreign deity, brought over from Korea.  This is certainly possible, though I don’t know that I would go that far—even if he had origins on the continent, it is clear that much of his character was defined by the people of the islands, particularly Izumo Province, so I have a hard time calling “foreign” in that context.

The other thing I find interesting is the way that he is shown sowing the islands with trees and plants of all kinds.  This hardly fits the character of one who, in the heavenly realm, had been all about destroying and wrecking the fields.  There are several other clues, as we go through, that I believe hint at Susanowo’s role, at least in Izumo, as a benevolent spirit who protected the people and helped ensure a good harvest.

Now, whether directly or indirectly, Susanowo eventually wound up at Torikami, at the headwaters of the Hii River in Izumo, which flows off of Mt. Sentsu.  Or possibly the Ye River, in Aki Province—though both actually flow through the old province of Izumo.  There, he came upon an elderly couple with their young daughter, and they were weeping.  When they noticed Susanowo they introduced themselves as Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi, Foot-stroking-elder and Hand-stroking-elder, two earthly kami—that is, the spirits that reside on the earth, also known as kunitsu-kami, as opposed to those in the High Plain of Heaven.  Their daughter, Kushinada-hime, meaning Wondrous Princess of the Rice Fields, was their 8th and youngest daughter, and, as it turns out, the only one left alive.  You see, every year the great beast, Yamata no Orochi, an 8-headed and 8-tailed serpent, would descend and devour one of their daughters.  This was the 8th year, and it was on its way back.

Now if you’ve seen the anime Blue Seed, you might recognize parts of this story, as Takada Yuzo drew on many of the elements in the Izumo cycle—though it’s hardly a straight up retelling of the story, so I don’t think there are any spoilers.  Still a good series, however.

Anyway, Susanowo told the man and woman that he could save their daughter, and asked for her hand in marriage.  The old man, Ashinazuchi, agreed, and immediately Susanowo turned the maiden into a comb and stuck it in his hair.  Which, I guess is one way to protect her?   Anyway, now sporting the latest fashion of wife-comb, Susanowo told the old couple to brew 8-fold sake, put one tub of sake in each of 8 cupboards—some stories say 8 gates—and then they waited.

Well, actually, I suppose they hid somewhere out of sight and THEN waited, but that part isn’t really stated explicitly.

Eventually, Yamata no Orochi appeared—a giant beast.  As the old couple had said, it had 8 heads and 8 tails.  Its eyes were bright red and there were trees growing on its backs.  As it crawled it spanned 8 hills and 8 valleys, and one account even says it had mountains on its sides.

We mentioned before that eight might mean “many” in some cases.  We see the eightfold, or the eighty, or even the eight hundred.  Just as the Bible likes 40, the Chronicles like the number eight.  Even today, throughout Asia, eight is considered a lucky number.  In Buddhism you have the Eightfold Path, and in Thailand people will pay extra for phone numbers or license plates with eight in them.  When you learn to write, you might learn the Eiji happo, or eight strokes of the character “Ei”.  It is a fortuitous number.  And so it is unclear when we encounter eight if that is truly the number or if it just means there are a lot of them, and eight was  good number to use.  So you may notice that the theme of 8 is coming up pretty heavily here in the story.  Even the name of the serpent, “Yamata”, is thought to refer to 8 heads, so there you go.  If anyone decides to make a drinking game out of the chronicles, I’d be wary about what you drink whenever “8” or “eightfold” is mentioned, as that could be a quick trip to alcohol poisoning.

Speaking of drinking games, when this giant beast came upon the tubs of sake, each head dove straight in and began to drink the sake.  The alcoholic beverage quickly did its work, and pretty soon Yamata no Orochi was dead drunk, unconscious to the world.  As soon as that happened, Susanowo drew his long sword—a sword 10 hand-breadths long, probably about a meter or so—and he went to work, cutting off the heads, and then continuing to chop up the rest of the body until he got to the end of its tail.  There he cut, but his sword suddenly chipped, encountering unexpected resistance.  Digging through the beast’s flesh, Susanowo pulled out a sword, which was called Ama no Murakumo—the Gathering Clouds of Heaven.

Or at least, that was its original name.  Some people may already know that this is the sword that would eventually get a new name, Kusanagi. But, well, spoilers!

Anyway, he pulled the sword out, recognized its superb qualities, and decided to send it back up to the Heavenly Plain, rather than keeping it for himself, because that is just the kind of guy he is, you know?  And for now we’ll leave it at that, but this sword will come up again, don’t you worry.  You know they call it Chekov’s gun, but I think I’m going to start calling it Susanowo’s Sword.

So after slaying the serpent and finding the sword, Susanowo set out to get married.  Presumably he changed Kushi-Inada-hime back into human form, and they made their way through the mountains  until they came upon a place that just called to him—“My heart is refreshed” he said, or “Suga Sugashi”.  And that is why that place is now called Suga.

This type of name origin abounds in the stories.  For example, the town of Susa was supposedly named because Susanowo decided he wanted his name associated with something good.  Then there is the township of Yasuki, which means “being comforted” because when he was inspecting the land of Izumo, Susanowo came through and, upon arrival, said “My mind has been comforted”.  Whatever the actual story behind the various names, it is clear that there was a theme going with how they were naming them, and it seemed about as creative as the names of Golden Age comic book heroes.

Now the location that Susanowo chose, Suga, is only about 40 kilometers or around 25 miles north of Torikami and the headwaters of the Hi River, at least as Google charts it—a good day’s walk, certainly, possibly two, given the mountainous terrain.  And it was here that he decided to build a palace—or miya—for his new wife to give birth.

Now as you may already know, “miya” not only refers to a palace, but in relation to the kami it more typically refers to a shrine.  So this is actually the first shrine we really see established in the Chronicles.  It probably wasn’t the first shrine ever, or even the first mentioned in the chronicles—remember, the three female deities created by Ameterasu when she chewed up Susanowo’s original sword?  They clearly went to reside at the three shrines of Munakata, but this seems to be the first shrine that is deliberately established, in this instance by Susanowo himself for his wife and child.  Today, the Suga Shrine is still going strong, dedicated to Susanowo and Inada Hime, as well as their son, which the shrine names as Suga no Yuyamanushi Minasaro hiko Yashima no Mikoto, or the god of Yashima, aka Honshu, the Prince Minasaro, Lord of the Hot Spring Mountains of Suga.

And by the way, since we are in the age of Firsts, we also get the first Japanese tanka, or short poem.  Tanka are traditional poems, similar to haiku, but with an extra 14 syllables.  So while Haiku are 5-7-5, the Tanka has an upper verse of 5-7-5 and a lower verse of 7-7.  Susanowo recites this poem in conjunction with the construction of the miya, and it goes something like this:

Yakumo tatsu / Izumo yabegaki / Tsumogomeni

Yabegaki tsukuru / Sono Yabegaki wo!

Or as Heldt translates it, without worrying about the syllable count:

Eightfold are the clouds that rise,

In Billowing Clouds, where eightfold fences

To surround and shelter my wife

Are eightfold fences made by me

Ah, those eightfold fences!

Now most experts agree that this is not actually the oldest poem we have, based on structure and other such things, but it likely is of some antiquity, even so. 

This poem is thought to have been used in ancient Izumo as a blessing on new construction—it is unclear if that was because of this story or vice versa.  It does appear in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, with only one minor difference which does not significantly alter the overall meaning.

As with most tanka, it is filled with double-meanings and intent, even as it repeats the same word over and over again.  First off there is the “Yakumo Tatsu”, the eightfold clouds that rise, which is followed up with the “Billowing clouds”—Izumo.  Obviously, this is a reference to Izumo, whose name means billowing clouds.  This could be a reference to the type of billowing rain clouds that would have been an auspicious sign for an agricultural community.  It also brings to mind the name of that sword that was found in Yamata no Orochi’s tale, Ama no Murakumo, which translates to gathering clouds.  Clouds are clearly a thing with Izumo, and not surprisingly seeing how it is in an area that gets quite a bit of rain, even during Japan’s dry season.

Now the Izumo Fudoki it uses this same phrasing to explain how Izumo got its name, but it tells it slightly differently.  There it states that Izumo was named for the decree of a different god, Yatsukamizu Omi-zu-nu no Mikoto, one of Susanowo’s descendants, according to the Kojiki, and responsible in the Fudoki for literally pulling Izumo together—a story we’ll have to tell at another time.  He, too, remarks on the rising clouds, “Yakumo tatsu”, and thus the phrase Yakumotatsu Izumo is born.  So this poem, about creating a house, has ties to the story about creating the state—or at least the province of Izumo.  Of course, this would have come after the Suga episode, but if you haven’t noticed already, the chronology can get a little Jeremy Bearimy up in here.  Which actually came first?  Who knows.

As a minor note, Susanowo is also apparently quite proud of his eightfold fences, yabegaki or perhaps today, yaegaki.  He mentions them three times in five lines of poetry—a little excessive, don’t you think?  Then again, anyone whose put up any decent amount of fencing might just understand why he’s so proud of his accomplishment that he feels the need to point it out several times. 

Yaegaki likely refers to the various fences and walls that would have been drawn up around a shrine or residence—a not uncommon feature up until the modern day, especially on for religious institutions and the private residences of the well off.  Even some kofun haniwa show us examples of houses with walls around them.  And, of course, there’s the number eight again.  So drink.

Alright, so now there he was, with a new shrine-palace built in Suga, his wife ensconced there with their young baby boy.  To oversee everything, Susanowo puts his in-laws in charge as Inada no Miyanushi, or the lords of the Palace of Inada.

Now some of the accounts provide these titles early on in the story.  That’s not uncommon - after all, if that is the name that they were more popularly known by, it would make sense that they were recorded that way from the get-go in some of the stories.  This is much like referring to Tokugawa Ieyasu or Toyotomi Hideyoshi by those names —it is much easier to keep the narrative straight if you just use a single name, even if the person doesn’t technically earn that name until much later in life.   And trust me, this is much easier than trying to keep up with all the name changes that people went through over their lives, and a practice I’ll be employing in many cases.

That said, it is nice that we have names from before they became Inada no Miyanushi, because that says something as well.  You see, the names of the parents match the type of male-female pairing that is popular, though in this case they are Foot and Hand, respectively.

In the Aki province account, the two names of Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi are combined into one for the father, who is called Ashinadzu-Tenadzu, while his wife is instead called Inada no Miyanushi Susa no Yatsumimi.  In yet another version, Inada no Miyanushi Susa no Yatsumimi is the only name given for either parent. 

This name Inada no Miyanushi Susa no Yatsumimi is very interesting.  “Inada no Miyanushi” we’ve largely covered, although it is significant that “Inada” can also mean rice fields.  So rather than being “Master of the Palace of Princess Inada” it could also be “Master of the Palace of the rice fields”.  And “Susa no Yatsumimi” could mean, roughly, “the Eightfold or Many Augustness of Susa”.  I can’t help but wonder, though, if the term “Mimi” is related to the old “Mimi” found in the Wei chronicles narrative.  If that were the case, I would imagine we could alternately interpret this as the Great Ruler of Susa.  So one way of reading this name, Inada no Miyanushi Susa no Yatsumimi, is Great Ruler of Susa, Master of the Palace or Shrine of the Rice Fields. 

The similarity of “Susa” as a place name to “Susanowo” is quite intriguing.  We haven’t otherwise mentioned Susa, except in the name Susanowo, which you could translate as the “Man of Susa”—though here they do spell Susa slightly differently, which may indicate that they had different pronunciations.  Still, it feels remarkably similar, and there may be something else here that we just aren’t getting out of the chronicles. 

Oh, and a little name side note.  In the Kojiki there is an extra title tacked on to the in-laws that should seem familiar:  Suga no Yatsumimi.  Like Susa no Yatsumimi, but now focused on Suga, instead, which would make sense given the location of the shrine, or palace.  Of course it is always possible that someone made a mistake for Susa no Yatsumimi, thinking it should be related the location mentioned in the text, Suga, rather than the other town, Susa.  It would certainly be an understandable mistake to make.

Now, after building the shrine for his family and appointing his in-laws to run it, Susanowo traveled to the peak of Mt. Kumanari and rode off into the sunset.  Possibly quite literally, if, as some people suggest, Ne no Kuni was synonymous with where the sun went each evening.

So I really want to go back and look a little more closely at just what all of this tells us about Susanowo.  I mean, to start with,  the character of Susanowo has changed considerably.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, he still goes all honey badger on Yamata no Orochi, but this time it is for a good cause—saving the maidens from being devoured.  He isn’t just causing havoc wherever he goes—in fact, several of the ancillary stories actually show him being helpful—he brings back those seeds and plants trees across the archipelago--and in one of those versions he specifically does it to give the Japanese people a leg up on the mainlanders, since they have gold and silver, and all sorts of good things.  And so he gives the Japanese trees—which doesn’t seem like much, but it does provide them the means to build boats, and we’ve already talked a little bit about the fine line between Japanese traders and Japanese pirates, particularly from a mainland point of view.

This is one of the reasons that Susanowo is intriguing to so many people.  With Izanagi and Izanami, and even Amaterasu, Susanowo is wild and problematic.  But back down on the earth, he is a god that is bringing things to the people, and saving them from disaster.  This is why a lot of people wonder if the two gods from the different stories are really one and the same.  I mean, I know they have the same name in the stories, so obviously they are the same from the Chronicles’ standpoint, but was that originally how it came to be?  Or perhaps we are even seeing stories about Susanowo from different perspectives—say, an Izumo and a Yamato perspective.

It may be helpful to understand that most of these stories were not necessarily recorded in anything resembling a chronological order.  When we read of exploits in the Fudoki—and in the Izumo Fudoki, it is almost entirely positive regarding Susanowo—we find snippets of stories, but usually related to the creation of such and such a town, or the naming of a particular natural feature.   There is no temporal association between them, and they are all true from the point of view of the people who are telling the stories.  While some may appear to be connected, those connections are pretty fast and loose, at times.

So let’s go back to what we remember about the archipelago during the time of Queen Himiko—about 400 or 500 years before all this gets recorded.  At that time, we could see that the various states, or countries, in the archipelago all had their differences, and Himiko’s position was not one of pure, absolute authority.  In fact, there were still countries that weren’t part of the greater coalition, and had their own Kings or rulers.

Even in the 8th century there were still cultural differences in the various provinces, many of which were still called “kuni”—that is “state” or “country”—despite being governed by the central court in Yamato.  Even today, different parts of Japan have their own character, including special festivals and customs that are localized to various geographic regions.

Cultural differences also show up throughout the later Yayoi and Kofun periods in terms of burial mounds.  While the Yamato-based Keyhole-shaped tomb mound certainly spread and became popular, there were lots of local variations.  In some cases it was the shape of the tomb that was different—in Izumo, for instance, you have a square shaped tomb that is rather distinctive to the area, and often used as part of the argument for Izumo’s continued, long term independence.  In others you might have a difference in the types of haniwa, or clay statuary, used on the different tombs, which varied over time and geography.  These are just a couple of indicators that there was still cultural diversity even though everyone was part of the same nominal polity.

And so it isn’t surprising that there might be different stories with the same or similar characters across the various ancient provinces—possibly even from town to town.  A story about a famous culture hero gets passed around and changed from place to place.  People make up stories and attach that kami’s name to it.  Or perhaps they don’t quite name the kami—perhaps it is simply a kami of the oceans, or the rains, or some other aspect, and later the stories get conflated with those of other deities who operate in the same realm.

All of this must have been quite the challenge for the Nara-period chroniclers who were trying to organize these stories into a coherent narrative.  We often talk about them having a bias towards the Temmu dynasty, but I suspect that, rather than simply making up stories and information, they were simply using what they knew or believed to be the “truth” of their time as their guiding principle in putting these stories together.  If that is the case, it may explain why different episodes occur when they do, simply because it made more narrative sense, at the time.  Still, as we see, there were more than few different viewpoints.

So, on to Yamata no Orochi, the great beast that Susanowo slew.  It is often described as a serpent or even a dragon.  Despite the typical movie image of dragons as winged, four-legged, fire-breathing monstrosities like Smaug, sitting on hoarded treasure deep in the mountains, dragons and serpents have often been conflated over the years.  In Europe they are often called “wyrms”—that’s wyrms with a “y”, not worms with an “o”.  These wyrms are often described in terms associated with snakes—long, slithering reptiles that have some kind of poison in their bite or even in their breath – and in Japan, snakes have long been associated with various kami and the supernatural.  Even Asian dragons can be said to be more “snaky” than otherwise.  The God of Miwa took the form of a snake, and in the Ryukyu islands there are tales of snakes stealing the elixir of immortality, which is why they shed their skins and are born anew. Some people even think the snakes that show up on Jomon pottery are a possible precursor to some of these beliefs.  Though, honestly, snakes are maybe just an easy decoration - who hasn’t made a snake by rolling out a piece of clay?

Also, the hero rescuing the maiden from the dragon or monster is a motif that is common throughout much of Eurasia—possibly part of an older story that is incorporated into different cultures wherever it goes.  And one thing to think about is that many of these stories often seem to be connected with agriculture in one way or another.  Think about the story of Hercules fighting the hydra, another many-headed serpent monster, where he had to cut off all of the heads in order to defeat it.  There is a common interpretation that the hydra actually represented some kind of river system, and cutting off its heads was the equivalent of damming up the river or controlling it.  From that perspective, we also have Susanowo, our local hero, saving the lady of the Rice Fields by fighting a similar creature with many heads and tails (the Chronicles specify 8, but remember that 8 is often just a stand-in for “many”) that spans mountains and valleys, and he is rescuing Inada hime, the lady of the Rice Fields. 

Well, what is long and serpentine and spans the lengths of many mountains and valleys, other than a river?  And of course, early on, rivers would have been the life or death of a farming community.  Our earliest evidence of rice agriculture was down in the marshy, reed-filled plains next to rivers, which would naturally flood and inundate the soil with water and nutrients.  But flooding could be fickle—one year the waters barely crest, and the crops are anemic, and then another year the river is a raging, out-of-season torrent that strips your seedlings from the ground.  Getting control of the water through irrigation technology would have been important, which is one of the reasons that Susanowo’s crimes in Heaven - filling in the ditches and breaking down the barriers in the rice fields - were viewed so negatively.  So Susanowo, here, can be seen as a defender of the Rice Fields by taming the serpent that represents the uncontrolled waters.

And there’s several aspects of this story that seem to reflect some kind of ritual sacrifice.  For one thing, the couple have not left and run away.  They know the creature is coming but they have remained, and their daughter is destined to be devoured.  The idea of sacrificing people to river gods was definitely present in the archipelago: there are numerous examples of stories where, to appease a river spirit, one or more people are offered up as sacrifices to be drowned in the waters.  Does this story have an element of that?  If Yamata no Orochi were actually a personification of the wild rivers—possibly the rivers coming off of Mt. Sensu—then perhaps Inada Hime was meant as a sacrifice.

But then, in comes the hero, Susanowo.  And Susanowo offers the beast sake, another kind of sacrifice, and a not unusual beverage to offer up to appease the spirits, even today .  After all, who doesn’t like to drink a little and have a good time, even if you’re divine?

And finally, the climax of the event, Susanowo marries the wondrous Inada hime—maybe reflecting some kind of fertility ritual, related to the waters and the rice fields?

So, tying all these threads together: the rivers, and the rice fields, and the palace or shrine of Susa.  Emilia Gadaleva suggested these connections in an article in Japan Review back in 2000, and makes a good case that Susanowo may not have been simply the wild god that he is depicted in the first part of the story, but may have originally been a god worshipped for his power over the waters, which were critical to the success of the harvest.  He wasn’t directly a god of bountiful harvests, but instead a god of storms—a god of rain.  Remember, Susanowo’s origin story was being blown out the nose of Izanagi – very appropriate for a storm god.  He was also highly connected to the seas, since the weather at sea can have such a huge impact, particularly on early sailing vessels.  It would also provide something of an explanation for his sudden mood swings, from violent tantrum to wild elation.  This could also explain that strange episode when Susanowo was leaving the High Plain of Heaven—him leaving during the rainy season, which may have been associated with him and his storms.  

But in agriculture it would not just be Susanowo’s ability to bring rain that would be important, but the ability to withhold it and the floods it would bring.  This connection of rain and storms with agriculture  may also explain his part in the Kojiki with Ohogetsuhime—from him cutting her down because he believes she is defiling the food to the food that grows forth from her body, the seeds of which he takes with him down to the earthly realm.  In short, if Susanowo was in charge of bringing the rain, he was vital for a good growing season and a good harvest.  This would also be quite fitting for a god of Izumo, which was said to be named for the billowing rain clouds that would make the fields fertile and encourage crops to grow.

Given all of that, I can easily see how many of these myths might reflect a ritual festival of some kind, overseen by the Lord of the Palace of the Rice Fields—perhaps the chief priest or shaman of Susa or of Inada, or maybe even the local rulers, assuming they weren’t one and the same.  A woman would be chosen to represent Inada hime, and a man would represent Susanowo.  The Lady would be offered as a sacrifice, but the Susanowo figure might ”purchase” her freedom with offerings of alcohol—a substitute for her life.  And then the two would be ritually joined, in a fertility festival that likely was seen as encouraging the early harvest.  Of course, we don’t know if anything like this occurred, but it’s certainly possible.

Another question that pops up:  What is all this about the Korean Peninsula?  Could it be that Susanowo really was a banshin, a foreign deity, brought over by immigrants from the peninsula?  Silla is on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula and was one of the three major kingdoms, excluding the Gaya confederacy.  People from both Silla and Paekche would have been familiar to the Japanese, and there are many groups in the archipelago that trace their descent back to people who came over from the mainland at one time or another.  The banshin theory posits that those immigrants to Japan brought Susanowo with them, and his Johnny Appleseed trek through the islands relates how he got from the peninsula to Japan, eventually ending up in Izumo.

Proponents of this theory would point out that according to the Samguk Sagi, one of the Korean historical Chronicles, there was a King of Silla named Susung, which some say meant “Shaman”, and they suggest this may be the origin of the name that became Susanowo, but I feel that is a bit more of a stretch than I’m comfortable making without further evidence.

 Another hint at his possible foreign status is that in one of the stories his sword, the one he used to kill the serpent, is called Orochi no Karasabi.  Orochi is a fairly obvious reference to the slaying of Yamata no Orochi, and Karasabi refers to it be a Kara, or Gayan, blade.  Even the Orochi no Aramasa is thought by some to refer to an area of the Korean peninsula.  Now it would not necessarily have been odd, especially in the old stories, for someone in Japan to possess a blade from the mainland—it might even have had some prestige attached.  However, in light of the rest of the story, it certainly seems to give credence to the idea that Susanowo might have been a foreign kami.

Personally, I’m not sure that I would go that far.  It may be that aspects of stories imported from Korea were part of what made up the Susanowo that was recorded in the Chronicles, but he was clearly interwoven into the ritual and ceremony of the people of the archipelago by the 8th century.  There have been a lot of attempts to try to remove the so-called “foreign” influences and find some kind of pure Japanese story underneath.  I am certainly guilty of looking at it in that light, but over hundreds of years there are also lots of things that can’t easily be separated.  And just because there are similarities with other cultures and countries doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t recognize that this was the Japan of that day and age, at the very least.

Regardless of where he had come from, Susanowo has been written into the history of Izumo.  In the Izumo Fudoki, there are numerous times that he is mentioned or that one of his sons or daughters are used to explain placenames or local customs.  Clearly he was important to the people of the area.

So anyway, here closes the story of Susanowo—at least as the main protagonist of our story.  We will certainly see him again, no worries, but for now we’ll have to content ourselves with what we have—and what is that, exactly?

Well, we saw him created by Izanagi (and possibly Izanami), we saw him rage and get himself exiled.  We followed him on his trip up to the Heavenly Plain to say farewell to his sister and watched as he got into all sorts of trouble up there, causing his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu, to lock herself into the Heavenly Rock Cave, plunging the world into darkness.  When the light eventually returned to the world Susanowo was punished and send down to earth, where he rescued Kushinada hime from a terrible serpent, discovered a sword that he sent back up to Heaven, and set up a place for his family in Suga, before finally heading off to Ne-no-Kuni, the land of his deceased mother.

Personally, I think we are seeing jumbled memories of a variety of things all mashed together.  In part, we are seeing signs of what might be ancient lineages and even dynasties.  Was Susanowo at one point a great lord in or perhaps over Izumo?  Or perhaps a local lord of in Susa, whose progeny went on to become great lords themselves?  To me, a lot of the stories of the gods look like they could just as easily be about mortals.  Is it possible that the difference between a kami and a human being is more about how they are remembered and how legendary their stories have become?

Was the sword from the tail of Yamata no Orochi perhaps a family heirloom or other such device—possibly even some kind of tribute handed over to Yamato as part of an early alliance?  Are the stories about Silla and the Korean Peninsula perhaps memories of the Wa people there, or simply stories brought over with peninsular immigrants who brought new knowledge and learning that earned them a position of respect?  And perhaps some details are simply well known stories, where the people of Izumo had inserted their own culture hero into the mix.  Likewise, some of the negative aspects may have come from stories outside of Izumo, telling of times when others saw Izumo as a threat and a danger to be pacified and controlled.  I think there is a lot of that in here, but teasing it apart will be difficult, if not impossible.  It is like putting together a puzzle where you don’t have all the pieces, some of the pieces may come from a different set, and you’ve lost the box so you aren’t even quite sure where it goes.  But every once in a while you find that edge piece and it seems to fit somewhere.

And I think that’s where we’ll leave things, for now.  Next episode I think we’ll look at that sixth generation descendant of Susanowo, Ohonamuchi, also known as Ohokuninushi, and after that we might take a detour from the Chronicles to get a better picture of Izumo in the archaeological record.

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That’s all for now.  Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.