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Kusanagi (Grasscutter) is a legendary Japanese sword, as important to
Japan's history as Excalibur is of Britain's. It is a powerful sword like
the Katana.
The history of this sword extends into legend when the Japanese god,
Susano-O-No-Mikoto encountered a grieving family headed by Ashi-Na-Zuchi.
Upon inquiry, the elder told that his family was ravaged by the fearsome
8-headed serpent of Koshi who consumed seven of the family's eight daughters
and the creature was coming for his final daughter, Kushi-Nada-Hime. Susano
proceeded forward to investigate tne creature, and after an abortive
encounter he returned with a plan to defeat it. In return, he asked for
Kushi-Nada-Hime's hand in marriage which was agreed. Transforming her
temporarily into a comb to have her company during the battle, he detailed
his plan.
He instructed the preparation of 8 vats of rice-beer to be put on
individual platforms positioned behind a fence with 8 gates. The monster
took the bait and put each of its heads through each of the gates. With the
necessary distraction provided, Susano attacked and slew the beast. He
decapitated each of the heads and then proceeded to the tails. In the fourth
tails, he discovered a great sword inside the body with Susan-o which he
called Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi (Sword-of-the-village-of-the-clustering-clouds)
which he presented to the god, Amaterasu to settle an old grievance.
Generations later in the reign of the 12th emperor, Keiko, the sword was
given to the great warrior, Yamato-Dake as part of a pair of gifts given by
his aunt, Yamato-Hime, to protect his nephew in peril.
These gifts came in handy when Yamato-Dake was lured onto an open
grassland during a hunting expedition by a treacherous Daimyo. The lord, had
fiery arrows fired to ignite the grass to trap Yamato-Dake in the field and
have him burn to death and killed the warrior's horse to prevent his escape.
Desperately, Yamato-Dake used Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi to cut back the grass to
remove fuel from the fire, but in doing so, he discovered that the sword
enabled him to control the wind around to make it move in the direction he
swung. Taking advantage of the magic, Yamato-Dake used his other gift, fire
strikers, to enlarge the fire in the direction of the lord and his men and
used the winds controlled by the sword to sweep the blaze toward them to
kill them. In triumph, Yamato-Dake renamed Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi as Kusanagi
(Grasscutter) to commemorate his narrow escape and victory.
Eventually, Yamato-Dake married and fell in battle with a monster after
ignoring his wife's advice to take Kusanagi with him.
Eventually, the sword came into the possession of the emperor until the
Battle of Dannoura, a naval battle that ended in the defeat of the forces of
the child Emperor, Antoku at the hands of Minomoto Yoshitsune. Upon hearing
of the defeat, the emperor's grandmother led the Emporer and his entourage
to commit suicide in the waters of the strait along with three important
artifacts which included Kusanagi. Although the enemy managed to stop a
handful of them and recovered two of the three items of the Emperor,
Kusanagi was never found.
The 10th Emporer, Sujin, ordered the fashioning of a replica of Kusanagi
and was placed at the Temple of Atsuta.
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