Recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki — Japan's oldest chronicles, compiled in the early 8th century CE — the story of Yamata no Orochi is not a minor folk tale. It is one of Shinto mythology's foundational narratives, and it ends with the discovery of a sword still counted among the Three Sacred Treasures of the Japanese imperial throne.
Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the impulsive storm god, had just been banished from the High Plain of Heaven by his sister, the sun goddess Amaterasu, following a string of destructive misdeeds. Descending into the province of Izumo, he encountered an elderly couple weeping beside their one remaining daughter, Kushinada-hime. Their other seven daughters, they explained, had already been devoured one by one, year after year, by a monstrous serpent — and Kushinada-hime was due to be its next victim.
The serpent, Yamata no Orochi, is described in the chronicles on a genuinely landscape-scaled register: eight heads and eight tails, a body so enormous it spanned eight valleys and eight hills, eyes as red as winter cherries, and moss and cypress trees growing across its back — described less as a mere animal and more as a living, malevolent piece of terrain.
Susanoo offered the couple a bargain: he would kill the serpent in exchange for Kushinada-hime's hand in marriage. He first transformed her into a comb, tucking her safely into his hair, then had the couple brew eight vats of powerful sake and set them behind a fence with eight gateways, one vat at each. When Orochi arrived, each of its eight heads drank from a separate vat and, thoroughly drunk, the serpent fell asleep. Susanoo drew his sword and cut the helpless creature to pieces.
Cutting into one of the serpent's tails, Susanoo's blade struck something hard — inside he discovered a magnificent sword, which he presented to Amaterasu as a gift of reconciliation. Originally named Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi ("Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven"), it became better known by its later name: Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the "Grass-Cutting Sword."
One of Three Sacred Treasures: Kusanagi joined the mirror Yata no Kagami and the jewel Yasakani no Magatama as one of the Three Sacred Treasures (Imperial Regalia) of Japan — together forming the legendary basis of imperial legitimacy, said to have been passed down from Amaterasu herself to every succeeding emperor.
What can and cannot be verified: Kusanagi is traditionally held today at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya — but the sword is never publicly displayed, viewed only, according to tradition, by the shrine's own priests, and even the current Emperor is not said to see it directly during accession rituals. This means the sword's actual physical existence and condition cannot be independently verified by historians or the public. Whether treated as a genuine ancient artefact quietly preserved, or as a purely symbolic object whose ritual concealment is itself the point, Kusanagi occupies a genuinely unusual space between documented history and living, unverifiable myth — one of the more striking examples in this collection of a legendary object still formally active in a nation's constitutional and religious life today.