天羽々斬
Ama-no-Habakiri
Also known as: Heaven's Feather Cutter; Snake-Slaying Sword of Susanoo
Description
Ama-no-Habakiri (Heaven's Feather Cutter) is the divine sword wielded by the storm god Susanoo-no-Mikoto in the mythological accounts of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki — specifically the sword he himself used to slay the eight-headed serpent Yamato-no-Orochi, as distinct from the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi which was discovered inside the serpent's tail after the battle. Also called 'Snake's Rough Rectitude' (Orochi-no-Aramasa) and the 'Ten-Fist Sword' (Totsuka-no-Tsurugi) in various passages, it represents Susanoo's own divine weapon of destruction and order-creation against the forces of chaos. A physical object identified as Ama-no-Habakiri is preserved as a sacred body (shintai) at Isonokami Jingū in Nara — the ancient shrine dedicated to divine swords that is also home to the Seven-Branched Sword (Nanatsusaya-no-Tachi). The theological distinction between Ama-no-Habakiri and Kusanagi is philosophically significant: the former is the sword that destroys the monster; the latter is the divine creation that emerges from within the monster — together they enact the mythological pattern of destruction giving birth to creation, chaos giving birth to order. In the Japanese religious and aesthetic tradition of swords as sacred objects, Ama-no-Habakiri stands at the mythological origin point of the entire concept.
Legends & Stories
The mythological drama of Ama-no-Habakiri centers on the greatest battle in Japanese mythology: Susanoo against Yamato-no-Orochi, the eight-headed serpent that had consumed seven daughters of an aged couple, and was about to consume the eighth, the beautiful Kushinada-hime. Susanoo's strategy — to brew eight great vats of intensely concentrated sake, wait for the serpent's eight heads to drink them all and fall into a stupor, then descend with his divine sword and cut each head — is notable for winning through wisdom and patience rather than raw force. The scholars of folklore see in the Orochi myth a layer of historical memory: the Izumo region of Shimane Prefecture was the greatest iron-producing area of ancient Japan, using the 'tatara' iron-smelting process that required great earthwork channels to direct river water. The 'eight-headed serpent with blood-red eyes and a belly bright as fire' is plausibly an image of the smelting furnace and its molten outflow — and Susanoo, the storm god whose rain quenches fire, slaying it with a sword and finding the supreme sword within is a mythological encoding of 'the smith masters the furnace and produces the greatest weapons.' The sword identified as Ama-no-Habakiri is kept at Isonokami Jingū — the same sacred preinct that houses the Seven-Branched Sword — in the divine treasury of Japan's oldest shrine of swords, where it remains inaccessible and veiled in sanctity, the first sword in the Japanese mythological imagination and the progenitor of all the divine power attributed to blades in the tradition that follows.