Susanoo, the storm god — exiled from the High Plain of Heaven for his violence, sent down to wander the earth — arrives in Izumo and finds an elderly couple weeping by a river. They have eight daughters. Seven have been devoured by an eight-headed serpent. Tonight is the night the eighth will be taken.
Her name is Kushinada-hime, “the rice-paddy maiden.” Susanoo, perhaps moved, perhaps already planning, offers a trade: he will kill the serpent if they will give him their daughter. They agree. He hides her — and this is where she is hidden — at a place that becomes Yaegaki Jinja.
The serpent and the sword
The serpent, Yamata-no-Orochi, has eight heads and eight tails. Its body covers eight valleys and eight peaks. Susanoo asks the elderly couple to brew eight vats of sake — extraordinarily strong — and to set them out where the serpent will find them. The serpent comes. It drinks. Each of its eight heads drinks one vat. It falls asleep.
Susanoo cuts through it. Through the fourth head, his sword strikes something hard inside the serpent’s body. He cuts open the flesh and pulls out a sword — Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutter, which will eventually become one of the Three Sacred Treasures of the Japanese imperial regalia. He sends it up to heaven as an offering to his sister, Amaterasu.
The serpent is dead. The maiden is safe. Susanoo, who arrived in Izumo as a storm god in exile, has just done his first heroic act on earth.
The first poem
He marries Kushinada-hime. He builds them a palace. And as the clouds rise over the new building, he composes a poem. The poem is the oldest waka in Japan — the first known instance of the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable structure that defines the form for the next 1,300 years.
It begins: Yakumo tatsu — “eight clouds rise.” The clouds rise from Izumo. Susanoo builds a palace of eight fences (yaegaki) to hide his bride inside. The name of this shrine comes directly from that poem.
The full poem is recorded in the Kojiki, in the original Japanese, in the eighth century. It is the first thing in Japanese literature that scans.
The mirror pond
Behind the shrine, in a grove of trees, is the Kagami-no-Ike — the Mirror Pond. The tradition: write a question about love or marriage on a special paper coin, place a one-yen or ten-yen coin on top, and float it on the surface of the pond. If the paper sinks within fifteen minutes, your wish will come true soon. If it takes more than thirty, the answer is not yet. Couples visit. Singles visit. The pond, by general agreement, takes its work seriously.
Editor’s note
Yaegaki is small for a shrine of its importance, set in a quiet residential corner of Matsue. Arrive without expecting grandeur. Walk through the inner precinct first, then go down the gravel path behind the main hall toward the trees. The pond is not signposted dramatically; you come around a bend and there it is. Sit on the bench. Read the poem. The clouds rise.