Kushinadahime- Japanese GodDeity"Rice Paddy Princess"

The Last Daughter

Kushinadahime was the last surviving daughter of the earthly deities Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi. The elderly couple had borne eight daughters, but seven had been devoured, one each year, by Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed serpent that terrorized Izumo. When Susanoo arrived after his banishment from Takamagahara, he found the three of them weeping by the Hi River. The time of the serpent's annual return had come, and Kushinadahime was the only one left.

Susanoo asked who they were and why they wept. Learning of the serpent, he offered to slay it in exchange for Kushinadahime's hand in marriage. Her parents agreed. Susanoo then transformed Kushinadahime into a comb, which he placed in his hair for safekeeping during the battle.

The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi

Susanoo devised a stratagem. He instructed Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi to brew sake eight times refined, set out eight vats, and build a fence with eight gates, each gate bearing a platform with a vat of sake upon it. When Yamata no Orochi arrived, the serpent thrust its eight heads through the eight gates and drank deeply. As the sake took effect and the beast fell into a stupor, Susanoo attacked, hacking the serpent to pieces. From the middle tail he discovered the great sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi, which he presented to Amaterasu.

With the serpent destroyed, Susanoo restored Kushinadahime to her human form and married her. He built a palace at Suga in Izumo and composed what is celebrated as the first Japanese poem: Yakumo tatsu / Izumo yaegaki / tsuma-gomi ni / yaegaki tsukuru / sono yaegaki wo. Many clouds rise; the clouds form a fence, a many-layered fence, to enfold the newlyweds. What a fine many-layered fence.

The Izumo Lineage

Kushinadahime's marriage to Susanoo established the Izumo divine lineage. The Kojiki places Ōkuninushi, the great ruler of the earthly realm, among their descendants. Through this line Kushinadahime became the ancestral mother of the Izumo gods, the earthly counterpart to Amaterasu's heavenly line.

She is enshrined alongside Susanoo at Yaegaki Shrine in Shimane Prefecture, a shrine of marriage and romantic bonds. Visitors float paper fortunes on the mirror pond to divine their romantic prospects. The paper drifts or sinks, and the distance it travels tells whether love will come from near or far.