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Japanese Pantheon tradition
Also known as: Ousu, Yamato Takeru no Mikoto
Legendary prince of early Japan sent by his father, Emperor Keiko, to subdue rival clans in the west and east. Central figure of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, and the hero associated with the sacred sword Kusanagi.
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Yamato Takeru was born Ousu, a son of the semi-legendary Emperor Keiko. The Kojiki (712 CE) opens his story with a disturbing act: his father, alarmed by Ousu's violence after he killed his own brother, sends him away on a string of near-suicidal military missions, first against the Kumaso people in the west, hoping the danger will remove him from court. The Nihon Shoki (720 CE), compiled only eight years later, tells the story quite differently: it omits the fratricide entirely and frames Ousu's western campaign as a loyal prince's service rather than a father's attempt to be rid of him. Which account is closer to an older tradition, if either, is debated by scholars of early Japanese literature.
Disguised as a woman, Ousu infiltrated a feast held by the Kumaso chieftains and killed them, and it was the dying chieftain Kumaso Takeru who gave him the name Yamato Takeru, "the brave one of Yamato." On a later eastern campaign, his aunt Yamatohime, priestess of the Ise shrine, gave him a sword associated with the god Susanoo's slaying of the eight-headed serpent Yamata-no-Orochi. When enemies set fire to the grass around him in an ambush, Yamato Takeru used the sword to cut back the flames and escape, and the blade was renamed Kusanagi, "grass-cutter."
On his way home from the eastern campaign, Yamato Takeru insulted the deity of Mount Ibuki by underestimating him, and the god struck him with a debilitating illness. He died shortly after at Nobono, still short of home. The Kojiki closes his story with an image rather than a burial: his grieving family builds him a tomb, but his spirit rises from it as a great white bird and flies off toward the sea, so that the tomb they built is said to have held only his clothing.
Struck down by illness after insulting the mountain deity of Ibuki; the Kojiki records that his spirit left the tomb built for him in the form of a great white bird and flew away toward the sea.
Similar heroes and figures across mythologies
Both are their people's greatest young warrior, carry a form of supernatural protection into battle, and die before old age in a death later tradition treats as a tragedy rather than a defeat.
Historical texts and references
“The Kojiki tells how Yamato Takeru, disguised in women's clothing, slipped a blade into the Kumaso chieftain and was given his own name by the dying man in return.”
“The Nihon Shoki's account of the western and eastern campaigns differs from the Kojiki in chronology and in omitting the killing of his brother that opens the Kojiki's version.”