Susanoo, after Yaegaki, after the founding of his palace and the writing of the first poem, lives a long life. He fathers many gods. He rules Izumo. And at the end of his days, in the mountains south of the central plain, he chooses one place above all others. He plants his staff in the ground and declares, “This is the land of my soul.“
That land is here.
The only shrine for him
Susanoo is enshrined in many places across Japan. He is paired with sisters, wives, sons, daughters. He receives offerings in Kyoto, in Tokyo, in the deep countryside of Tohoku. But Susa Jinja, alone among all the shrines of the archipelago, is dedicated to Susanoo himself, by Susanoo’s own designation. The Izumo no Kuni Fudoki — the regional gazetteer compiled in the eighth century — records the founding directly. The god chose the place. The place became the shrine.
The location is striking partly because it is so unstriking. The site sits in a small valley in Satacho, about an hour by car from the centre of Izumo. There are no famous photographs. There is no large town nearby. The shrine is just there, at the bottom of a wooded slope, beside a stream, as it has been for an estimated thirteen centuries.
The great camphor
Beside the shrine grows a single tree. It is a camphor — a kusunoki — and it is enormous. The trunk is six and a half metres across. The branches reach twenty metres into the canopy. Estimates of its age vary; the most conservative is 1,200 years. The shrine grew up around it. Then continued to grow around it. The tree is older than most countries.
You stand beneath it and the air changes. The leaves filter the light into a green that feels older than the species of trees that surround it. There is a rope tied around the trunk to mark it as sacred. The rope is the only modern thing about the scene.
The quietness
Susa Jinja sees few visitors compared to Izumo Taisha or Yaegaki. The remoteness is part of its character; the Susanoo enshrined here is not the spectacular hero of the Orochi episode but the older, settled god, the one who has done his work and chosen his rest. The mood of the place reflects that. The cedars rise. The stream runs. There is no obvious destination once you arrive — only the main hall, the camphor, and the slow pace of being there.
Editor’s note
Allow at least an hour. The shrine itself can be walked in fifteen minutes; the rest is for sitting and slowing down. Bring rain gear if the season suggests it — the valley catches weather that the coast does not. Try to arrive in the morning, when the camphor casts a long shadow toward the stream. This is the place a storm god chose for his soul. The land, by his own word, is here.