Kusanagi- Japanese ArtifactArtifact · Weapon"One of the Three Sacred Treasures"

The Serpent

After his banishment from heaven, Susanoo wandered along the Hi River in Izumo and came upon an elderly couple weeping beside the water. They were Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi, earthly deities, and with them was their daughter Kushinadahime. They had once had eight daughters, but each year the serpent Yamata no Orochi came and devoured one. Only Kushinadahime remained.

Yamata no Orochi stretched across eight valleys and eight hills. Moss and cypress trees grew upon its back. Its belly was bloody and inflamed. It had eight heads and eight tails, and its eyes burned red. Clouds gathered above wherever it moved.

Susanoo agreed to slay the beast in exchange for Kushinadahime's hand. He transformed the maiden into a comb and placed her in his hair. Then he instructed the couple to brew eight vats of sake, each distilled eight times, and to set them behind eight gates. When Yamata no Orochi arrived, each head drank deeply from its own vat until the serpent fell into a stupor. Susanoo hacked it apart until the Hi River ran red.

As he cut through one of the tails, his blade struck something hard. Inside the serpent's flesh was a magnificent sword. He named it Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven, for the clouds that had always hung above the serpent.

The Gift to Amaterasu

Susanoo presented the sword to his sister Amaterasu as tribute. When Amaterasu later sent her grandson Ninigi to rule the earthly realm, she gave him three sacred objects: the mirror that had lured her from the cave, the curved jewels from the same event, and the sword from the serpent's tail. These Three Sacred Treasures passed to Ninigi's descendants and have legitimized their rule ever since.

The Grass-Cutting

Prince Yamato Takeru, sent by his father Emperor Keikō to subdue the eastern provinces, visited his aunt Yamato-hime at Ise Shrine before departing. She gave him the divine sword and a bag of fire-striking tools.

In Suruga Province, a local chieftain lured Yamato Takeru onto a grass-covered plain and set fire to the field from all sides. The sword moved of its own accord, cutting the grass around the prince. He used the fire-striking tools to set a counter-fire that consumed his enemies. From this the weapon received its enduring name: Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutting Sword.

The White Bird

Yamato Takeru continued his campaigns but left Kusanagi with his wife Princess Miyazu-hime in Owari before ascending Mount Ibuki to confront a mountain deity. The god appeared as a white boar. Yamato Takeru dismissed it as a mere messenger and walked on. A divine curse struck him. Ice and hail pounded him, and he staggered down the mountain, mortally ill.

Dying in the marshes of Ise, he sang: "Yamato is the highest part of the land. The mountains are green partitions. Nestled in the folds of the blue mountains is Yamato, so beautiful." He collapsed and died. His soul became a great white bird that flew toward the heavens. His family built a tomb, but the bird flew on, alighting at Shiki, then Kawachi, then skyward and out of sight.

Miyazu-hime enshrined the sword at what became Atsuta Shrine in present-day Nagoya.

Dan-no-ura

During the Genpei War, the Taira clan held the child Emperor Antoku and the imperial regalia. At the naval Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, facing defeat, the emperor's grandmother took the boy in her arms and leaped into the sea. The mirror and jewel were recovered. The sword, by some accounts, was not.

Atsuta Shrine maintains that the sword taken to Dan-no-ura was a replica and that the true Kusanagi never left the shrine. No living person has seen the blade. It is permanently sealed within Atsuta's innermost sanctuary, never photographed, never examined. When the regalia are presented to a new emperor, they remain wrapped and enclosed in boxes. The emperor receives the containers without seeing their contents.