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Susanoo, a MythSource painting
Japanese

Susanoo

01Identity

Susanoo in Japanese tradition

Susanoo's best known trick is a simple one: eight vats of sake, brewed eight times over, set out for an eight headed serpent that drinks itself senseless before he cuts it to pieces. He comes to this moment already banished from heaven for bad behaviour, called the Impetuous Male in one reference work, and named there as brother to the sun goddess Amaterasu. In Izumo he marries the woman he saves from the serpent, Kushinada, and builds a palace at Suga; a sword recovered from the dead monster's tail passes eventually into Japan's imperial regalia. Years later he tests his own daughter's suitor, the god Okuninushi, shutting him in a room of snakes and then a room of biting insects before setting a whole field on fire around him. Okuninushi survives every test, and when he finally escapes with Suseri hime, a battered Susanoo gives up the chase and grants him, reluctantly, rule over the land of the living.

  • Brother to the sun goddess Amaterasu. (The Big Book of World Mythology)
  • Banished from heaven for bad behaviour before he came down to Izumo. (Essential Visual History of World Mythology)
Top questions

The quick answers

  • Who is Susanoo?

    Susanoo is a Japanese deity.
    Source

    Source

    • The Oxford Companion to World Mythology
    • Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697 (Aston translation, 1896)

  • Is Susanoo in Ōkami?

    Yes. It is linked here to The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi.

  • What family links are recorded for Susanoo?

    Father: Izanagi, Mother: Izanami, Spouse: Amaterasu, 17 children, 4 siblings.

  • What happens in The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi?

    Already banished from heaven, Susanoo tricks the eight headed serpent Yamata no Orochi into drinking itself senseless on strong sake, then kills it and pulls a hidden sword from its tail.
    Source

    Source

    • Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising Sun
    • The Big Book of World Mythology
    • Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Félix Guirand, 1959)
    • Essential Visual History of World Mythology
    • The Oxford Companion to World Mythology
02Family

Susanoo’s family, at a glance

IzanagiIzanami
SusanooAmaterasuHirukoKagu-tsuchiTsukuyomi

with Amaterasu, Kamuōichihime, Kushinadahime

AmatsuhikoneAme no HohiAme no OshihomimiIchikishimahimeIkutsuhikoneIsotakeruKumanokusubiOyatsuhime and Tsumatsuhime
Suseri-himeTagitsuhimeTakiribimeToshigamiUkanomitamaWakumusubiYamato no ōkuni tama no kamiYashimajinumi no kamiŌkuninushi
03The names

The names Susanoo answers to

the Impetuous Male

an epithet for his conduct before he was banished from heaven

SourceThe Oxford Companion to World Mythology

Sosa no wo

Aston's spelling for Susanowo in the Nihongi account of the cave episode

SourceNihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697 (Aston translation, 1896)

04The myths

The myths of Susanoo

2 myths, with sources recorded for each, with 4 reviewed modern reworks linked where the evidence supports it.

The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi

Susanoo comes down from heaven already banished for his bad behaviour, crossing the water from Korea to reach Izumo, where he finds an old couple in tears. Their daughter Kushinada is promised to the eight headed serpent Yamata no Orochi, so he strikes a bargain with her father, Ashinazuchi: he will kill the serpent if he can have the girl as his wife. He introduces himself as Amaterasu's own brother, and the frightened parents, impressed to learn he is a god, agree at once. He changes Kushinada into a comb and sets her in his own hair for safekeeping, then tells her parents to brew sake, refined eight times over, poured out into eight great vats.

Yamata no Orochi comes for its meal and finds the eight bowls of wine waiting instead, one for each head, and drinks itself senseless on the poisoned drink. Susanoo turns back to his true shape and cuts the serpent to pieces, and the river runs red with its blood. His own sword breaks against the tail, and inside it he finds another blade, hidden and whole, which he later gives to Amaterasu when the two of them make their peace; passed down, it becomes one of the three treasures of the imperial house.

With the serpent dead, Susanoo marries Kushinada, the daughter he killed the monster for, and builds a palace at Suga. In two of these tellings the marriage makes him father to important gods of Izumo, Okuninushi chief among them. Susanoo, driven from heaven for his bad behaviour at the start of this story, ends it as a husband and, by these accounts, a father, in the home he crossed the sea and chose for himself.

The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi, a MythSource painting of the scene

In the modern world

Ōkami

Game

Restages the serpent-slaying as the game's central plot beat: a warrior descendant and a wolf goddess recreate the old rescue, freeing and then defeating Orochi to save a captive girl, mirroring Susanoo's own rescue of Kushinada.

Persona 4

Game

Keeps Susanoo as a violent god exiled from heaven for bad behaviour who goes on to slay Yamata no Orochi; the character who wields this Persona starts with a fox-trickster Persona and awakens this one as its evolved form.

Shuumatsu no Valkyrie

Comics

Keeps Susanoo as the god who once slew Yamata no Orochi, and carries his signature weapon forward as a named sword forged from the original Kusanagi no Tsurugi that he pulled from the serpent's tail.

SMITE 2

Game

Keeps Susano as Amaterasu's storm-god brother, cast out for his destructive wrath, who redeems himself by saving people from the serpent Orochi and comes away with the blade Kusanagi.

6 sources· checked 2026-09-02

  1. 1Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising SunT1
  2. 2The Big Book of World MythologyT1
  3. 3Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Félix Guirand, 1959)T1
  4. 4The Big Book of World MythologyT1
  5. 5Essential Visual History of World MythologyT1
  6. 6The Oxford Companion to World MythologyT1

Susanoo's Trials of Okuninushi

Okuninushi arrives at Susanoo's home and falls for his host's daughter, Suseri hime, on sight; the two of them come together at once, though her father wants nothing to do with the match. To test him, or perhaps to be rid of him, Susanoo shuts the young god in a room full of snakes for the night. Suseri hime has already given him a scarf with its own protection, and wrapped in it he comes through untouched. The next night brings a room of centipedes and wasps, and the same scarf sees him through again. Susanoo then shoots an arrow out over an open field and sends Okuninushi to fetch it back, setting the whole field alight the moment he is out in the open. Flames close in on every side until a small field mouse appears and leads him down into a burrow, where he waits out the fire in safety.

Seeing that none of his tests can kill his daughter's suitor, Susanoo is finally worn down, and the two lovers make their escape together, carrying off his koto as they go. Its string catches on the bark of a tree and rings out, waking Susanoo, whose hair had been tied to the rafters of his own hall; when he sits up, the whole building comes down on top of him. Hurt but alive, he chases the couple all the way to the edge of Yomi, the land of the dead, and from there he watches the young god pull steadily ahead of him. Beaten in the chase, Susanoo calls out his blessing on the marriage and grants Okuninushi the rule of the land of the living, a rule he keeps until Ninigi no Mikoto takes it from him in turn.

Susanoo's Trials of Okuninushi, a MythSource painting of the scene

4 sources· checked 2026-09-02

  1. 1Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Félix Guirand, 1959)T1
  2. 2Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising SunT1
  3. 3Essential Visual History of World MythologyT1
  4. 4Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising SunT1

The wider mythology

Works that draw on more of the mythology than any single story: full retellings of the saga, and worlds built out of the material.

Susanoo (2026)

Game

Keeps the throughline of a god cast down and disgraced who has to earn his way back, recast as the playable lead of an original action premise rather than any one plotted myth.

Also mentioned in

Stories elsewhere on MythSource that mention Susanoo, each on that figure’s page.

05Different accounts

Different accounts

›One source has Susanoo change Kushinada into a comb and wear her in his own hair; another has Susanoo turn himself into the comb, worn instead in Kushinada's hair.

    The accounts that differ: The Big Book of World Mythology, Susano-O and the Serpent; Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising Sun, Chapter 3: Gods

    From “The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi”

    ›The sword found in the serpent's tail is named Kusanagi in two tellings; in a third it is a different blade, the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven, with Susanoo's own weapon named separately as the Sword of Length Ten Times its Handle.

      The accounts that differ: Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising Sun, Chapter 3: Gods; Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Félix Guirand, 1959), Japanese Mythology - 407; The Big Book of World Mythology, Susano-O and the Serpent

      From “The Slaying of Yamata no Orochi”

      ›The insect filled room is remembered as centipedes and wasps in one telling and centipedes and bees in another.

        The accounts that differ: Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (ed. Félix Guirand, 1959), Japanese Mythology - 407; Uncovering Japanese Mythology: Exploring the Ancient Stories, Legends, and Folktales of the Land of the Rising Sun, Chapter 3: Gods

        From “Susanoo's Trials of Okuninushi”