Susano-o, Kami of the ocean and storms

Traditional Japanese Tattooing by HORIGA

Susano-o, Kami of the ocean and storms

Susa-no-o was born from Izanagi when cleansing himself in the river after his visit to the underworld and washing out his nose. Like his sister Amaterasu and his brother Tsukiyomi, he was especially blessed and so was assigned to rule over the ocean. Unlike his siblings, though, he did not graciously accept this great honour, instead lamenting and wailing about the loss of his mother. This eventually infuriated his father Izanagi, who consequently reassigned the wayward son to go to rule over the land of Yomi (the underworld) instead.
Before his departure he requests to say farewell to his sister Amaterasu, leading to a series of events (blog 2), resulting in Susa-no-o being punished by all assembled Kami and sentenced to a fine of one thousand tables of offerings ( consisting of cloth, jewel strings, paper, bronze ware, and foods; these are still offered at shrines and the ceremonies to the emperor today ) his beard being shaved, nails pulled out and being banned from the heavenly planes.
Forced to wander the earth in the Central Land of the Reed Plains, as he came to the area of Izumo (modern day Shimane) he could hear a wailing unlike his own and after looking for the source of the lamentations for a while he came across an elderly couple, the earthly Kami Ashi-nadzuchi and his wife Te-nadzuchi.
Asking what the reason for the lament could be, the couple explained to him that an eight- headed and eight-tailed dragon, Yamata-no-Orochi, with burning red eyes and cypress and black fir trees on its back had been coming to their place, devouring one of their eight daughters every visit and, already having lost seven of them to this big serpent, could not face the loss of their last daughter, Kushinada-hime.
Susa-no-o decided to help them in exchange for promising to marry the daughter to him. He instructs the couple to brew eight barrels of strong sake, changes Kushinada-hime into a hair comb he places into his topknot and prepares for the arrival of the dragon.
The dragon arrives and in lieu of finding Kushinada-hime consumes the eight barrels of special sake, one barrel per head. The strong sake makes the dragon tired, and after he falls asleep, Susa-no-o jumps out of his hiding spot and cuts him to pieces with his sword Totsuga-no-tsurugi. As he is chopping through one of the tails his sword strikes something hard, jarring the blade. Looking to find out what it could be, he delves into the tail and finds the the great sword Kusanagi-no Tsurugi (also known as Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi -“Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven”).
This he offers to his sister Amaterasu as a reconciliation gift for all the trouble he had caused. After marrying Kushinada-hime he settled in Izumo and has many descendants, including Okuninushi, the kami of magic and medicine and the legendary first ruler (tenno) of japan, Jimmu Tenno.