Susanoo

Mm-hmm.

At the same time, there are kind of these earlier dragon, or the earliest dragon references appear right around 712 CE, 720 CE, and they both reference a story that is wholly not Chinese in the fashion of, uh, Susanoo and the eight-headed serpent, Yamata no Orochi.

And this is a, it's one of these fun stories where you have, uh, Susanoo, who was a storm god.

He was the brother of the sun goddess, uh, Amaterasu.

He's banished from the high plain of heaven after a series of destructive pranks against his sister.

And every single year, he would come down at the same time, and he began taking their livestock until their livestock were gone.

And then every year, he would come down, and he would eat one daughter, and this god and goddess were weeping because they were down to their last daughter.

And you have a situation where Susanoo decides, "I will slay this dragon." And I guess when he laid eyes on Kushinada, he had fallen in love with this god and goddess' daughter.

Um.

Now, if you've been following this series, you might be thinking, like, wait a minute, what about Amaterasu? What about Susanoo? Like, what about all of these other deities that we've talked about? Yes, they are kami as well.

So Amaterasu, for example, is one of the most important kami in Shinto tradition and is associated with the sun.

There's so many of them, but they all, if you think about the stories that we shared, have something to do with nature or life or the ancestors.

The inland sea was veiled in soft, rich colors.

Susanoo, the brother of Amaterasu, who had resigned his ocean scepter and now reigned as the Moon God, was jealous of his sister's glory and worldwide sway.

The heaven-illuminating spirit had but to whisper and she was heard throughout her kingdom, even in the depths of the clear pool in the heart of the crystal.

Her rice fields, whether situated on hillside, in sheltered valley, or by running stream, yielded abundant harvests, and her groves were laden with fruit.

But the voice of Susanoo was not so clear, his smile was not so radiant.

The undulating fields which lay around his palace were now flooded, now parched, and his rice crops were often destroyed.

The wrath and jealousy of the Moon God knew no bounds, yet Amaterasu was infinitely patient and forgave him all things.

They sang softly of the clouds and the wind and the light of the sky.

So I'm going to turn into a dragon and try to blow this shit up.

And then we get like a flashback of... you know, Orochi doing some shit, and he gets stopped by Susanoo.

Who finds a

cool sword in it.

She's like an avatar of

Amaterasu, right? Or Amaterasu?

Yeah, she's got Amaterasu, and then he's got the spirit of Susanoo.

But I think the mirror that she uses, which reminds me a lot of Godzilla's ray, heat ray, when she uses that shit.

This heavenly duo stirred the ocean with a spear, and the salt that dripped down created the first island.

They populated the world with all sorts of kami and natural phenomena, including their three noble children, the sun goddess Amaterasu and her brothers, the moon god Tsukuyomi and Susanoo, the storm god.

The term kami can also refer to impersonal divine forces.

A kami might be the spirit of a natural feature like a river or mountain, a natural force like wind, thunder, or fire.

you find this Trinity everywhere.

Tsukuyomi, Amatera, Susano, because it is the moon.

It is the sun.

It is nature.