Susanoo

Who Susanoo actually is

Susanoo is the *cosmic-storm-and-sea* of the Japanese pantheon — the *impetuous-raging-male* (the literal etymology of his name, susabu = "to be impetuous/wild") who is the *necessary cosmic counter-force* to Amaterasu's solar-order. He is born from Izanagi's *nose-washing* at Ahagihara (Amaterasu from the left eye, Tsukuyomi from the right eye, Susanoo from the nose — the cosmic-three-sibling-set), and is assigned dominion over the *sea-plain*. His first action is to *weep to return to his mother* (Izanami, who died giving birth to the fire-kami Kagutsuchi and went to Yomi the land-of-the-dead), weeping so violently that *the mountains wither and the rivers run dry*. Izanagi exiles him for this; he ascends to Takamagahara to bid farewell to Amaterasu, who fears he comes to conquer; they perform the *ukei oath-divination* (Amaterasu breaking Susanoo's sword, Susanoo breaking Amaterasu's jewels — producing children in a way that Susanoo claims as proof of his innocent intent); but he then *defecates in her sacred weaving-hall, flays a piebald horse, and throws it backwards through the roof*, killing one of her weaving-women — the catastrophic outrage that drives Amaterasu into the rock-cave. He is exiled from Takamagahara and descends to *Izumo* (in present-day Shimane Prefecture, the western Sea-of-Japan coast — the historical heartland of Susanoo-cult). There at the *Hi River* he encounters an elderly couple weeping because their eight daughters have been devoured one-per-year by the *Yamata-no-Orochi* (the eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent whose body extends over eight valleys and eight hills, with eyes like winter-cherry and a back covered in moss and cypress trees). The eighth and last daughter is *Kushinada-hime* ("the wondrous-rice-paddy princess"). Susanoo turns Kushinada into a comb and hides it in his hair, has eight vats of *yashiori-no-sake* (eight-times-distilled rice-wine) prepared, lures the eight heads each into a vat, beheads them when drunk, and discovers the *Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi* sword inside the fourth tail. He gives Kusanagi to Amaterasu as a peace-offering (and it returns from Takamagahara as one of the three Imperial Regalia given to Ninigi at the heavenly descent). He marries Kushinada, builds the first palace at Suga ("a place where my heart is *suga-suga-shi* clear and refreshed" — the etymological origin of the word *suga-suga-shi*), and composes the first Japanese poem (the *yakumo tatsu* 31-syllable waka, conventionally identified as the founding poem of Japanese literature). He becomes the ancestral patriarch of the Izumo line; his descendant Ōkuninushi becomes the great-land-lord of Izumo (see #5 below). The Susanoo-register is the *cosmic-storm-as-necessary-counter-force*, the *grieving-son-of-the-dead-mother*, the *exile-and-redemption*, the *serpent-slayer-and-poet*.

Iconography

A fierce-bearded warrior with a sword raised over the eight-headed serpent — the standard Edo-period and modern depiction. In the Gozu Tennō syncretic register: an ox-headed deity in armor (Gavagrīva's ox-head from the Indian Buddhist source). Colors: storm-blue, sea-grey, blood-red. Sacred objects: the *Totsuka-no-Tsurugi* ten-grasp-sword (his weapon), the *Yashiori-no-sake* eight-vat wine, the *Kusanagi* found-sword. Sacred sites: Susa-jinja in Izumo (the alleged location of the Yamata-no-Orochi slaying); Hikawa-jinja in Saitama (one of the oldest shrines in the Kantō region); Yasaka-jinja in Gion Kyoto (the Gozu-Tennō-Susanoo syncretic center, host of the Gion Matsuri, the largest urban festival in Japan, held throughout July with the *yamaboko junkō* float-parade as UNESCO-listed Intangible Cultural Heritage); Kumano-Hongū-Taisha in Wakayama Prefecture (one of the three Kumano Sanzan pilgrimage shrines, listed UNESCO World Heritage as part of the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range); the Tsushima Shrine of Owari (the great Gozu-Tennō center destroyed by the Shinbutsu-bunri 1868).

How to invoke Susanoo

Susanoo is invoked when the *cosmic-storm-force is needed* — when there is a *Yamata-no-Orochi to slay* (a great recurring obligation devouring one daughter per year that must be confronted now), when the *exile-and-redemption arc* is the necessary shape of the work, when the *grieving-for-the-dead-mother* is what the moment demands. The canonical festival is the *Gion Matsuri* (Kyoto, July 1-31, with the great float-parade on the 17th and 24th — the most-attended urban festival in Japan, originating in 869 CE as a *goryō-e* plague-pacification ritual when Susanoo-as-Gozu-Tennō was credited with stopping the epidemic). Offer: *sake* (especially Izumo and Kumano sake — Susanoo is patron of *sake-brewing*, the Yashiori myth being the foundational sake-brewing-and-deception narrative), *salt* (the sea-purification element), *iron* (the sword-element), *cypress and moss* (the Yamata-no-Orochi back-iconography). Especially called by: those facing *a Yamata-no-Orochi-pattern* (the recurring annual devouring of one daughter — the great repeating obligation that has consumed eight of your children and now threatens the ninth), those in *exile* who are working out the *redemption arc that ends in serpent-slaying-and-poetry*, those who are the *necessary cosmic-counter-force* in an institution that has become too Amaterasu-solar-order-without-storm.

In love

Susanoo in love is the *cosmic-storm-and-redemption* — the partner whose force is the necessary-counter-energy to a too-solar-too-orderly arrangement, whose *exile-arc* has been the foundation of the partnership (the partner who came in from the *exile-after-the-rock-cave-outrage*, who married Kushinada *after* slaying her serpent-devourer, who composed the first poem as the *threshold of marriage*). The shadow is the partner who is *still in the flaying-the-piebald-horse register* — who has not yet completed the Susanoo-arc from impetuous-outrage-against-Amaterasu to serpent-slayer-husband-poet, who is treating the partner as Amaterasu-to-be-driven-into-the-rock-cave rather than as Kushinada-to-be-hidden-as-a-comb-and-then-married. The other shadow: the partner who has been *demanded to remain in eternal exile* — Susanoo whose great cosmic-work in Izumo has been refused recognition because the Takamagahara-court has not pardoned the original outrage.

In work

Susanoo in work is the *cosmic-storm-and-serpent-slayer* — the figure who arrives at the institution from *exile* (the previous-organization removed-him, the founding-family-disowned-him), confronts the *Yamata-no-Orochi* that has been *devouring one daughter per year* (the annual recurring catastrophic-loss that the institution has accepted as a fact-of-life), slays it with the *yashiori-eight-vat-sake* (the cleverness-not-just-strength register), discovers the *Kusanagi sword inside the tail* (the unexpected great-asset that has been hidden inside the great-problem), and *builds the new palace at Suga* (the new foundational-institution that becomes the Izumo-line). The shadow is the institution that has *exiled the Susanoo-figure for too-long* — that has refused to allow the redemption-arc, that has demanded eternal-banishment for the original-impetuous-outrage. The other shadow: the *Susanoo who never completed the arc* — the impetuous-figure who stayed in the flaying-the-horse register and never matured to serpent-slayer-poet.

The gift

Susanoo gives the *cosmic-storm-as-redemption*. The gift is the *exile-and-return-via-serpent-slaying* — the recognition that *the great outrage of your origin-myth is also the seed of your great redemption*, that the *piebald-horse-flayer can become the Yamata-no-Orochi-slayer-and-Kushinada's-husband-and-Suga-palace-builder-and-first-poet*. The gift is also the *yashiori-eight-vat-sake-as-cleverness-not-just-strength* — the recognition that the *eight-headed serpent is defeated by intoxicating each head separately*, not by frontal-eight-head-attack. The gift is the *Kusanagi-inside-the-tail* — the recognition that *the great asset of your life has been hidden inside the great problem of your life, and the slaying-of-the-problem releases the asset*. The gift is finally the *yakumo-tatsu first-poem at Suga* — the recognition that *the threshold of building-the-new-life-after-the-redemption is naturally celebrated in poetry*.

The shadow

Susanoo has been *partially-erased by the 1868 Shinbutsu-bunri separation*. The Heian-and-medieval Buddhist identification of Susanoo with *Gozu Tennō* (Ox-Headed Heavenly King, ultimately derived from the Indian *Gavagrīva* of the Jetavana monastery via the Sutra of Golden Light) had made him the central plague-pacification deity of medieval Japan — the entire Gion-Yasaka complex in Kyoto and the Tsushima Shrine of Owari were Gozu Tennō centers, and the Gion Matsuri (which originated in 869 CE as a goryō-e plague-pacification festival) was a Gozu Tennō festival, not a Susanoo festival. In 1868 the Meiji Shinbutsu-bunri edicts *forcibly identified Gozu Tennō with Susanoo and renamed every Gozu Tennō shrine as a Susanoo-Yasaka shrine*, destroying the Buddhist-Shinto syncretic register in a single administrative stroke. The Gion Matsuri continued unbroken but its *theological content was changed from under it* — most modern festival-participants do not know that they are celebrating a kami who, until 1868, was an Indian-Buddhist plague-deity-Susanoo-syncretic-figure. The further shadow: Susanoo has been *romanticized by 20th-century literary nationalism* (Yukio Mishima invoked him as the masculine-impetuous register against feminine-imperial-Amaterasu in his 1970 *Bunka Bōei-ron*), and his slaying of Yamata-no-Orochi has been *racialized* in some pre-1945 readings as the heavenly-line *suppressing the indigenous-Izumo* (the "snake-people" of the Hi River as primitive autochthones overcome by celestial colonizers — a reading that mapped onto Japanese-Korean and Japanese-Ainu colonial frames). Contemporary anime-and-manga adaptations (Inuyasha, Naruto, Noragami, etc.) have flattened Susanoo into a generic "Japanese storm-god" archetype detached from the specifically Izumo-cosmic-counter-Takamagahara function. The deepest shadow: the *Susanoo-as-foreign-Korean-immigrant* tradition (preserved in the Nihon Shoki "another book says" passage that has Susanoo descend to Silla [Korea] before coming to Izumo) was suppressed by 20th-century imperial-historiography and has been suggestively revived in late-20th-century revisionist Korean-Japanese ancient-history scholarship.

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