Of all the gods of ancient Japan, none is more wild, more troublesome, or more beloved than Susanoo, the storm god, the dragon-slayer, the brother of the sun. Born from the nose of the creator Izanagi, banished from the heavens for his wildness, he descended to the land of Izumo where he performed his greatest feat — the slaying of the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi — and there he founded the divine line of the great lord of the land.
Birth from Izanagi’s Nose
Susanoo appears in the opening chapters of the Kojiki (712 CE) and the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), Japan’s two oldest chronicles. After the divine creator Izanagi had lost his sister-wife Izanami in the underworld, he performed a ritual purification in a river. As he washed away the pollution of the land of the dead, three great gods were born from him: the sun goddess Amaterasu from his left eye, the moon god Tsukuyomi from his right eye, and the storm god Susanoo from his nose.
The myth gives Susanoo a peculiar and violent birth. Born from the nose, he is associated with breath, with the wild exhalation of the storm. His name is sometimes written with characters meaning “swift man” or “impetuous male,” and his personality fits the writing. He is restless, he is fierce, and he does not fit into the orderly heavenly realm that his father has assigned him.
Izanagi gave him dominion over the seas. But Susanoo was unhappy with his assignment. The sea, with its deep currents and its storms, was perhaps too like himself, and he longed for the bright realms of his sister. According to one version of the myth, he was forbidden to go up to the heavens at all, and his rampage through Amaterasu’s domain was a kind of cosmic crime.
The Wrath in Heaven
When Susanoo climbed up to Takamagahara, the Plain of High Heaven, his appearance struck terror into the kami. His wild hair, his fierce features, and his weeping were so alarming that Amaterasu’s attendants scattered in all directions. The mountains and rivers of the heavens themselves seemed to echo with his cry. Even the sacred trees of the heavenly realm bent and rustled in his presence.
Amaterasu, knowing the kind of trouble her brother would bring, came out to meet him. He protested that he meant no harm and wished only to bid her farewell. But his behavior contradicted his words. He broke down the boundaries of her rice fields, letting the wild boars rampage through her harvest. He fouled the hall where the first fruits of the new harvest were being offered. Worst of all, he broke a hole in the roof of her weaving hall and dropped a flayed pony through it, killing one of her weavers.
This last outrage was the one that drove the sun goddess into the cave in the famous myth of the disappearance of the sun. Susanoo, in other words, is the immediate cause of the central crisis of the Shintō cosmos. Without his rampage, there would be no cave, no gathering of the kami, no dance of Ame-no-Uzume, no sacred shimenawa rope.
The gods, in their turn, descended on Susanoo. They shaved his beard and his hair, pulled out his fingernails and his toenails, stripped him of his treasures, and banished him from the heavens. This was a kind of ritual unmanning, a stripping away of the wild forces of the storm. And yet, in some versions of the myth, Susanoo swore that he was pure of heart, and produced children in proof of his oath. He remained, in spite of his wildness, a god of the high order.
The Descent to Izumo
Banished from the heavens, Susanoo descended to the land of Izumo, on the western coast of what is now Shimane Prefecture. According to the Kojiki, he happened upon a husband and wife weeping beside a river. The husband, named Ashinazuchi (“Foot-Stroke-Grandfather”), and the wife, Tenazuchi (“Hand-Stroke-Grandmother”), told him that they had once had eight daughters, but a great serpent called Yamata no Orochi, the “Eight-Forked Serpent,” had devoured one daughter each year, and now only the youngest remained, a maiden named Kushinadahime (“Wondrous-Inada-Bean-Priceable-Princess,” also called Inadahime).
Susanoo at once offered to help. He transformed the maiden into a comb, which he tucked into his hair, and he instructed the old couple to brew eight vats of strong sake. They were to build a fence of eight gates and place a vat of sake at each gate. Then, when the serpent came, they were to leave the sake out and watch what happened.
When the great serpent arrived, its eight heads and eight tails stretching across eight hills and eight valleys, its eyes red as the winter cherry and its belly constantly swollen and inflamed, it was met with the smell of sake. The serpent’s eight heads dipped into the eight vats, and it drank them dry. Then, drunken and helpless, it lay down to sleep. Susanoo leapt out and cut off each head with his sword, and he dismembered the great body. As he cut into the serpent’s tails, he found — to his astonishment — a great sword hidden inside the fourth (or, in some versions, the eighth) tail. The sword was called Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the “Grass-Cutting Sword.”
This sword became one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan, eventually given to the imperial line. The myth explains how the Japanese people came to possess such a powerful treasure: it was found in the body of the great serpent, the most terrible of all the creatures of the ancient world.
After this great feat, Susanoo transformed the comb back into the maiden Kushinadahime and married her. He built a palace in the land of Izumo and composed a song:
Eight clouds arise. The eight-fold fence of Izumo makes a house for my wife. Ah, those eight clouds!
The song is the oldest waka poem in the Kojiki, and the place where Susanoo built his palace is the great Izumo Taisha, one of the most ancient Shintō shrines in Japan, ranking alongside the Ise Jingū of Amaterasu in importance.
The Sword of the Storm
The Kusanagi no Tsurugi that Susanoo discovered in the tail of the serpent has its own legend. The sword is sometimes called the Ame-no-Murakumo no Tsurugi, the “Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven,” and according to some accounts it was given to Susanoo by the gods of heaven before his descent to earth, as a token of reconciliation with his sister. The discovery of the sword in the serpent’s tail is a kind of confirmation of his divine status.
The sword was later given to Amaterasu as a peace offering, and then passed on to her grandson Ninigi when he descended to rule the earth. The sword was wielded by the legendary hero Yamato Takeru, who used it to cut his way out of a burning field, and it has been enshrined in the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya from ancient times.
The sword has never been seen in the modern era. It is said to be hidden within the shrine, and the Emperor himself, in his role as chief priest, has never seen it. Some scholars have suggested that the original sword was lost long ago and that a replica is now venerated in its place.
The Descendants of the Storm
Susanoo’s marriage to Kushinadahime produced many children. Among them was Ōkuninushi, “the Great Land-Master,” the great lord of the earthly realm. According to the Kojiki, Ōkuninushi built and civilized the Japanese islands during the so-called “Age of the Gods of the Earth.” He established the basic institutions of human society, including medicine, agriculture, marriage, and the rites of Shintō. He is one of the most important kami in the entire pantheon, sometimes called the “creator of the land.”
When Amaterasu’s grandson Ninigi was sent down from the heavens to rule the earthly realm, Ōkuninushi wisely yielded his kingdom, but he asked for a palace in the unseen world and the right to be worshiped as the tutelary kami of the land. This is the mythic basis of the great Izumo Taisha, where the spirit of Ōkuninushi is venerated, and where, in the tenth month of the lunar calendar, all the kami of Japan are said to gather for an annual council.
The relationship between Amaterasu’s heavenly line and Ōkuninushi’s earthly line is the mythic basis of the relationship between the central government of Japan and the older provincial powers. The Imperial line descended from the heavens; the provincial kami descended from the great lord of the land. The two coexist in a kind of cosmic division of labor.
The Storm God and the Sea
Susanoo was given dominion over the seas, and even after his banishment, he retained this connection. He is sometimes worshipped as a kami of the sea and of mariners. The dragon, a water-creature of immense power, is associated with him. In art, he is sometimes shown as a dragon-like creature, his wild hair flowing like the spray of a storm at sea.
In the Tale of the Heike, the great medieval epic, Susanoo is invoked in a famous passage describing the destruction of the Heike fleet by a great typhoon. The gods of storm and sea are at the heart of the epic’s tragic vision.
The storm god has also been compared to Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology, who like Susanoo is both a menace to the gods and at the same time the source of great treasures. Loki produces the eight-legged horse Sleipnir and other great wonders, just as Susanoo produces the Kusanagi. Both gods are punished for their wildness, and both are bound or banished in terrible ways. They are gods who embody the unpredictable, destructive side of the divine.
Worship of Susanoo
Susanoo is venerated at many shrines throughout Japan. The most important is the Izumo Taisha in Shimane Prefecture, where the great lord of the land, Ōkuninushi, is the principal kami of the shrine but Susanoo is also honored as the divine ancestor of the line. Other important shrines include the Kumano Hayatama Taisha in Wakayama Prefecture, the Yaegaki Shrine in Shimane, and the Susanoo Shrine at the foot of the great Izumo plain.
In Tokyo, the Yasaka Shrine in Gion, Kyoto, and the Goō Shrine in Nagasaki all honor Susanoo. The Gion Matsuri, the great festival of Kyoto held in July, is dedicated to Susanoo and is one of the three great festivals of Japan. The festival features enormous floats, music, and the carrying of mikoshi, portable shrines, through the streets.
Storm God, Brother of the Sun
The relationship between Susanoo and his sister Amaterasu is the central pairing of the Shintō cosmos. Where she is the orderly, the bright, the cultivated, he is the wild, the dark, the chaotic. Where she is the goddess of the rice field and the weaving hall, he is the god of the sea and the storm. They cannot live without each other: the storm is needed to bring the rain, the rain is needed to grow the rice. They are complementary, and their conflict is never finally resolved.
In this, Susanoo is the Japanese cousin of the Norse Thor, who wields the hammer Mjölnir and rides across the sky in his goat-drawn chariot, bringing thunder. Like Thor, Susanoo is a warrior god, a champion of the human world against the monstrous. Like Thor, he is also a great eater, a great drinker, and a god of oaths and contracts. Their stories rhyme in the deep grammar of myth, even though they were never historically connected.
Last reviewed: June 2026.