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is a legendary Japanese sword and one of three Imperial Regalia of Japan. It was originally called but its name was later changed to the more popular ''Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi'' ("Grass Cutting Sword"). ==Legends== The history of the ''Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi'' extends into legend. According to ''Kojiki'', the god ''Susanoo'' encountered a grieving family of ''kunitsukami'' ("gods of the land") headed by in Izumo province. When Susanoo inquired of Ashinazuchi, he told him that his family was being ravaged by the fearsome ''Yamata-no-Orochi'', an eight-headed serpent of Koshi, who had consumed seven of the family's eight daughters and that the creature was coming for his final daughter, . Susanoo investigated the creature, and after an abortive encounter he returned with a plan to defeat it. In return, he asked for Kushinada-hime's hand in marriage, which was agreed. Transforming her temporarily into a comb (one interpreter reads this section as "using a comb he turns into (as ) Kushinada-hime") to have her company during battle, he detailed his plan into steps. He instructed the preparation of eight vats of ''sake'' (rice wine) to be put on individual platforms positioned behind a fence with eight gates. The monster took the bait and put one of its heads through each gate. With this distraction, Susanoo attacked and slew the beast (with his sword Worochi no Ara-masa〔''Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697'', translated from the original Chinese and Japanese by William George Aston. Book I, part 1, page 56. Tuttle Publishing. Tra edition (July 2005). First edition published 1972. ISBN 978-0-8048-3674-6〕). He chopped off each head and then proceeded to the tails. In the fourth tail, he discovered a great sword inside the body of the serpent which he called ''Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi'', which he presented to the goddess ''Amaterasu'' to settle an old grievance. Generations later, in the reign of the Twelfth Emperor, ''Keikō'', ''Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi'' was given to the great warrior, ''Yamato Takeru'' as part of a pair of gifts given by his aunt, ''Yamato-hime'' the Shrine Maiden of Ise Shrine, to protect her nephew in times of peril. These gifts came in handy when Yamato Takeru was lured onto an open grassland during a hunting expedition by a treacherous warlord. The lord had fiery arrows loosed to ignite the grass and trap Yamato Takeru in the field so that he would burn to death. He also killed the warrior's horse to prevent his escape. Desperately, Yamato Takeru used the ''Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi'' to cut back the grass and remove fuel from the fire, but in doing so, he discovered that the sword enabled him to control the wind and cause it to move in the direction of his swing. Taking advantage of this magic, Yamato Takeru used his other gift, fire strikers, to enlarge the fire in the direction of the lord and his men, and he used the winds controlled by the sword to sweep the blaze toward them. In triumph, Yamato Takeru renamed the sword ''Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi'' (lit. "Grasscutter Sword") to commemorate his narrow escape and victory. Eventually, Yamato Takeru married and later fell in battle with a monster, after ignoring his wife's advice to take the sword with him. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kusanagi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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