The Eight-Headed Serpent of the River Hi

Banished from the heavenly plain of Takamagahara, the god Susanoo no Mikoto descended to a place called Torikami in the land of Izumo. There, watching a chopstick drift down the River Hi, he reasoned that people must live upstream, and he followed the current until he found an old man and woman weeping over a young girl.

The old man introduced himself as Ashinazuchi, an earthly deity and child of the mountain god Ōyamatsumi. His wife was Tenazuchi, and their daughter was Kushinada-hime. Once they had eight daughters, he explained, but for eight years running a monstrous serpent from Koshi had come and devoured one each time. Only Kushinada-hime remained, and her turn was near.

Asked to describe the creature, Ashinazuchi said its eyes were red like cherries, that it had eight heads and eight tails, and that its body — covered in moss, cypress, and cedar — stretched across eight valleys and eight peaks, its belly always oozing blood. This was Yamata no Orochi, the eight-forked serpent.

Susanoo revealed himself as the younger brother of the sun goddess Amaterasu and offered to kill the serpent in exchange for Kushinada-hime's hand in marriage. Ashinazuchi agreed at once. Susanoo then turned the girl into a comb and tucked it into his hair for safekeeping, before instructing the old couple to brew a powerful sake called Yashiori-no-Sake — eightfold-refined — and to build a fence with eight gates, setting a vat of the brew before each one.

Everything was prepared exactly as Susanoo had ordered, and soon the eight-headed serpent arrived as foretold. It plunged a head into each vat and drank greedily, growing drunk and finally collapsing into sleep. Susanoo drew the sword at his side, the ten-span blade called Totsuka-no-Tsurugi, and hacked the serpent apart until the River Hi ran red with its blood.