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Yamato-dake prefaced his campaign by worshipping at the shrine of Ise, where he received the sword "Herb-queller," which Susanoo had taken from the last chieftain of the Izumo tribesmen. Thence he sailed along the coast to Suruga, where he landed, and was nearly destroyed by the burning of a moor into which he had been persuaded to penetrate in search of game.
There is an interlude which deals with the foodstuffs of mortals. Punished with a fine of a great number of tables* of votive offerings, his beard cut off, and the nails of his fingers and toes pulled out, Susanoo is sentenced to expulsion from heaven.
Susanoo falls asleep during the process, and the Great-Name Possessor binds the sleeping Kami's hair to the rafters of the house, places a huge rock at the entrance, seizes Susanoo's life-preserving sword and life-preserving bow and arrows as also his sacred lute,* and taking Princess Forward on his back, flees. The lute brushes against a tree, and its sound rouses Susanoo.
The tribute of females, demanded yearly by the tribe, indicates an exaction not uncommon in those days, and the sword said to have been found by Susanoo in the serpent's tail was the weapon worn by the last and the stoutest of Orochi's followers. There is another theory equally accordant with the annals and in some respects more satisfying.
It is that Susanoo and his son, Iso-takeru, when they were expelled from Yamato, dwelt in the land of Shiragi the eastern of the three kingdoms into which Korea was formerly divided and that they subsequently built boats and rowed over to Izumo. It is also clearly shown that Izumo was the centre of disturbance and that virtually all the preliminary fighting took place there.
It will have been observed that, after the descent of Susanoo, the Kami on the "plain of high heaven" took no further part in "making" or "ruling" the "ever fruitful land of reed-covered moors, and luxuriant rice-fields," as Japan was called. Everything was left in the hands of Susanoo, the insubordinate Kami, who had been expelled from heaven for his destructive violence.
The "Korea" here spoken of is the present Kimhai in Kyongsan-do. It is further recorded that Susanoo lived for a time at Kumanari-mine, which is the present Kongju. Again, a Japanese book, compiled in the tenth century A.D., enumerates six shrines in the province of Izumo which were called Kara-kuni Itate Jinja, or shrine of Itakeru of Korea.
From the time when the fierce Kami, Susanoo, put his thoughts into verse as he sought for a place to celebrate his marriage, great crises and little crises in the careers of men and women respectively inspire couplets.
He is saved from the first two perils through the agency of miraculous scarves given to him by Princess Forward, Susanoo's daughter, who has fallen in love with him; and from the last dilemma a mouse instructs him how to emerge. *A son of Susanoo. These words "not in Korea" are worthy of note, as will presently be appreciated.
It has been also shown above that, in the era prior to Jimmu, indications are found of intercourse between Japan and Korea, and even that Susanoo and his son held sway in Shiragi.
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