The Banishment of Susanoo

A Brother’s Storm

Susanoo, born of Izanagi’s purification, was given dominion over the seas. Yet his heart stayed wild. Instead of ruling it, he wept and howled for his dead mother Izanami until, the Kojiki says, the green mountains withered and the rivers and seas dried up, and evil spirits swarmed like summer flies. Izanagi expelled him, and Susanoo went up to the High Plain of Heaven to take leave of his sister.

The Contest of Oaths

The mountains and rivers shook at his coming, and Amaterasu, suspecting he meant to seize her realm, bound up her hair like a man's, took up bow and quivers, and met him armed. To prove his intentions they swore an oath (ukehi) across the Heavenly Tranquil River: Amaterasu broke his sword into three pieces, crunched them, and breathed out three goddesses; Susanoo chewed her strings of jewels and breathed out five gods, among them Ame-no-oshihomimi, ancestor of the imperial line. Susanoo declared that his gentle daughters proved his purity, and, triumphant, he began to rampage.

Sacrilege in Heaven

He broke the ridges between her rice fields, filled in the irrigation ditches, and fouled the hall where the first fruits were offered. Then he broke a hole in the roof of the sacred weaving hall and dropped in a heavenly piebald colt he had flayed backwards. A weaving maiden, startled, struck herself with her shuttle and died. The sun goddess fled in horror into the Heavenly Rock Cave and shut its door. The world went dark, and every kind of calamity arose.

Drawing Out the Sun

The eight hundred myriad gods gathered by the Heavenly Tranquil River, and Omoikane, the god of thought, devised a plan. They set crowing roosters before the cave, hung a great mirror and strings of jewels on a sakaki tree, and Ame-no-Uzume danced on an upturned tub until the gods roared with laughter. Curious, Amaterasu opened the door a crack; she was shown her own radiance in the mirror, and the strong god Ame-no-Tajikarao drew her out by the hand while a sacred rope was stretched behind her to bar the way back. Light returned.

Exile

The gods punished Susanoo with a fine of a thousand tables of offerings, cut off his beard, pulled out his finger- and toenails, and drove him out of heaven. On his way down, the Kojiki adds, he killed the food goddess Ōgetsu-hime, from whose body grew silkworms, rice, millet, beans, and wheat. Driven to the land of Izumo, he would later face the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi — redemption through ordeal after chaos in heaven.

The tale binds weather, agriculture, and solar light: when the storm god’s fury goes unchecked, even the sun can choose to hide.

Sources

The story is told in the Kojiki (712) and, with several variant versions, in the Nihon Shoki (720); in the Shoki's main text it is Amaterasu herself who is wounded by the shuttle. The Rock Cave episode is the charter for the mirror among the imperial regalia and for the sacred dances of kagura.