Susanoo, the God Who Moves

I myself have traveled all over the country following Susanoo, and the conclusion that came into view was a plural figure: Susanoo is a god of the land, a god of migrants, and at the same time neither. In the myths, the gods of the land are called the kunitsukami (国つ神), and the gods of migrants who come across the sea are the amatsukami (天つ神). Since Amaterasu belongs to the amatsukami, Susanoo would naturally be taken as one of them too. Yet the texts record that for his raging nature he was banished from the amatsukami. What on earth does that mean?

Banished from the amatsukami, Susanoo becomes a wanderer and in time arrives in Izumo. In Japan such a wandering god is called a matsurowanu (まつろわぬ) god, a god who will not submit, meaning a god who is neither kunitsukami nor amatsukami. And because the matsurowanu gods have no country, they move. Why did the banished Susanoo come to Izumo? In fact, not only the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki but many other texts agree in describing Izumo as a dangerous land that did not yet hold together as a country.

While her brother Susanoo roams freely, the rootedness in place that his sister Amaterasu once held was discarded in this age. As I wrote the other week, in the myth of the ceding of the land to Izumo, Amaterasu does not take one step. She had to be kept still if she was to be raised to the heavens as the imperial ancestor. What is happening is a matter of thought: Amaterasu was alienated in thought. It is suggested that Amaterasu too was originally not an amatsukami but a kunitsukami.

The video I have released is based on the tale of Susanoo in the Kojiki myth, Yamata no Orochi, the eight-headed serpent. Into it I have mixed, on the basis of my research and with ideas of my own, the legend of Xu Fu recorded in the ancient Chinese Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian). It is the legend that the First Emperor of Qin issued an order to his retainer Xu Fu to search for an elixir of immortality, and Xu Fu came to Japan leading 3,000 people. The Shiji uses the word "east," and this means Japan. It is not mere fancy; traces remain across Japan. In last month's survey I visited Iwami (western Shimane Prefecture) and Izumo, and Shingu in the Kumano region of Wakayama Prefecture; in these places many traces of Xu Fu remain alongside Susanoo, and an old tradition even says that Xu Fu was Susanoo. The typical case is the motif of Iwami kagura that I wrote about last month. By what I saw, the costume of Susanoo surprised me: it clearly carries the traditions of ancient China.

Isotakeru is a child of Susanoo and is told of as one of three siblings, together with Oyatsuhime and Tsumatsuhime. After his famous slaying of Yamata no Orochi, Susanoo is said to have crossed with the three siblings to Silla on the Korean Peninsula, taught forestry and other skills there, and then returned to the homeland where his mother goddess dwelt. On that journey, it is said, the gods first landed on Karashima, an island a little to the south of here, took off their wet clothes, and then descended upon a huge rock that rises from the sea off the coast of Isotake.

In other words, the traces of a vast trading network that linked the ancient Korean Peninsula with the whole Sea of Japan region are still clearly inscribed here today. Unless it is raining, if you climb the cape of Isotake you can see across to the Shimane Peninsula, where Izumo Taisha stands. The seafaring Ama peoples who landed here or approached this coast in ancient times could go on into Izumo by sight alone. Standing here, you understand well that this was the gateway into the province of Izumo. From here, I believe, they advanced inland by way of Lake Jinzai, Lake Shinji, or the Hii River in Izumo, and gradually came to rule the Japanese archipelago.

When I think of how history and myth meet in this land, I wonder whether it is a trace of the fact that, from ancient times, the gateway for anyone heading from the area around Silla on the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese archipelago was not northern Kyushu but the coast from Izumo to Iwami.

What is interesting is that, as in the myths of the birth of the land in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, whenever the gods descend, they always first land, or descend, on a small island, rock, or mountain nearby. Going straight onto the mainland was probably not proper in their faith, or in the most primitive form of their misogi purification. They would rid themselves here of the defilement they had taken on, and only then set foot on the new land. One can imagine that they shared some such common rite.

Crucially, when ancient voyagers from Shikoku set out for Yamato, they would never have ventured directly onto an unfamiliar coast. Instead, they would have made landfall first on a smaller nearby island, reading the terrain and observing the shoreline before attempting the mainland. These shores had been continuously inhabited since the Jomon period; an abrupt, unannounced landing on the mainland would have carried immense danger. A small offshore island offered a safe and detached vantage point from which to dispatch emissaries to negotiate and conduct rituals with local inhabitants. Only after establishing formal accord would they step ashore on the mainland. This cautious protocol of utilizing intermediate islands as diplomatic thresholds is mirrored directly in the staging of the kuniumi (国生み, birth of the land) myths—an indispensable canon of knowledge for ancient seafarers.