The Legend of Okuninushi and Suseri-hime
At a Glance
- Central figures: Okuninushi, the God of the Great Land, and Suseri-hime, daughter of the storm god Susanoo.
- Setting: Susanoo’s storm realm and the earthly realm; drawn from Shinto mythology as recorded in the Kojiki.
- The turn: Susanoo subjects Okuninushi to three lethal trials, and Suseri-hime secretly aids him through each one; afterward, the pair flee with Susanoo’s sacred treasures.
- The outcome: Susanoo, acknowledging Okuninushi’s courage and cunning, blesses his rule; Okuninushi returns to the earthly realm as its rightful god, with Suseri-hime as his consort.
- The legacy: Okuninushi came to be worshipped at Izumo Taisha Shrine as a kami of relationships, healing, and prosperity, with Suseri-hime at his side.
Okuninushi arrived in Susanoo’s realm with little to recommend him but ambition. He needed the storm god’s guidance, perhaps his blessing, if he was ever to establish authority over the chaotic earthly realm below. What he did not expect was Suseri-hime.
She saw him first. Susanoo’s daughter - the Princess of Storms, her name carried that meaning - looked at the visitor and told her father plainly that this was a remarkable man. Susanoo listened. He did not agree or disagree. He showed Okuninushi to a room for the night.
The Bed of Snakes
The room was full of serpents.
Suseri-hime had understood what her father intended. Before Okuninushi was left alone, she pressed a cloth into his hands - a scarf woven with protection - and told him to wave it three times if the snakes came near. He did. The snakes settled, and Okuninushi slept. When morning came, he walked out unharmed. Susanoo looked at him and said nothing.
The following night, the room was given over to giant centipedes. Again Suseri-hime found him beforehand. Again she gave him a charm. He chewed tree bark and spat it at the creatures, and the centipedes withdrew. Two nights, two rooms, and each time a woman who should not have helped him had.
The Burning Field
The third trial was different. No room, no night - this time, Susanoo took Okuninushi to an open field and shot an arrow into the tall grass. He told his guest to retrieve it. Then he set the field on fire.
The flames moved fast. Okuninushi was somewhere in the middle of the field when they caught, and there was no obvious direction out. Then a mouse appeared at his feet. It spoke: the hollow ground here would hold him safe. He pressed himself down into the earth while the fire ran across the surface above, and when it had passed, the mouse came back to him with the arrow in its mouth.
He carried the arrow out and laid it before Susanoo.
The Sleep of the Storm God
That night, Susanoo slept, and his sleep was heavy. Okuninushi and Suseri-hime did not wait for morning.
He tied Susanoo’s hair to the rafters of the palace, quietly, strand by strand, so that waking would take time. Then they gathered what they came for: the Sword of Life, the Bow of Life, and the Heavenly Robes - three objects that together signified divine authority over the land. Suseri-hime carried what she could. Okuninushi carried the rest. They ran.
Susanoo woke when they were already distant. He pulled himself free of the rafters and gave chase, his voice loud enough that mountains moved. At a pass in the hills he finally saw them ahead of him - small figures, the treasures among them, his daughter’s back turned toward him as she ran with a man who had just robbed him.
Susanoo’s Blessing
He could have killed them. He was fast enough, and the storm gods do not miss.
Instead he shouted after them. His words crossed the distance: use the sword and bow to drive back your enemies, use the robes to stand before the heavens, build your hall at the foot of Mt. Uka and take Suseri-hime as your chief wife. He called Okuninushi son. It was not forgiveness exactly - it was acknowledgment. A man who could survive the snake room, the centipede room, the burning field, and then steal from a sleeping god while tying his hair to the ceiling was not a man easily dismissed.
Okuninushi did not look back. He kept running. But the words reached him.
The God of the Great Land
They came down out of the storm realm and into the world below, and Okuninushi began building. With the Sword of Life and the Bow of Life he subdued the conflicts that had kept the earthly realm unstable. The Heavenly Robes gave his claim a form the other kami could recognize. Suseri-hime stood beside him through it, and her position as his chief wife was understood - she had made his survival possible when no one else would or could.
The land took shape under their joint attention. Okuninushi negotiated, arbitrated, cultivated, and in time the realm settled into something prosperous. At Izumo, on the coast of the Japan Sea, the great shrine would eventually rise in his name - a place where people came to ask about marriages, to seek healing, to pray for the things that bind people together. The kami enshrined there is still called the God of the Great Land, and Suseri-hime’s name is still spoken beside his.
Of Susanoo, less is said. He returned to his storm realm and stayed there. What he felt about losing his treasures and his daughter is not recorded. He had called Okuninushi son. He had given his blessing on a stolen future. Perhaps that was enough.