The god of the sword. In the Nihon Shoki it is this kami, together with Takemikazuchi, who is sent down to pacify the land. The Kojiki does not name him at all; there the envoys are Takemikazuchi and Ame-no-Torifune.
Telling the same event, the two chronicles swap out one of its principals. The passage is well known as a place where the differing interests of the compiling clans show through.
'Futsu' is understood to imitate the sound of something being cut clean through — the blade entering, the moment of no resistance. That sound became the god's name.
The sacred blade Takemikazuchi sent down during Emperor Jimmu's campaign is called Futsu-no-Mitama, and the syllables move through the myths as a word for the sword itself. Few kami begin from a sound rather than a meaning.
Futsunushi is enshrined at Katori Jingu in Chiba, Takemikazuchi at Kashima Jingu in Ibaraki. The two face each other across the Tone river and have long been treated as a pair.
They drew the devotion of the warrior class, and many schools of swordsmanship tell of masters who secluded themselves at one or the other to receive their art. The paired enshrinement mirrors the passage in which the two were sent down side by side.
The sword, and the act of cutting through. Katori Jingu is the head shrine, with Katori shrines throughout Japan; he was also invited to Kasuga Taisha in Nara alongside Takemikazuchi.
Katori and Kashima also stood at the frontier as the Yamato court pushed eastward. That the gods of the sword were enshrined at the eastern edge of the realm carried a meaning of governance as well as of faith.
A stick with a beautiful break: a sharply split fracture, a snapped end as flat as if cut with a blade, a branch drawn thin and fine.
Where Takemikazuchi is chosen by the whole form — straightness and a point — this kami is chosen by the break itself. The Bureau looks not at the shape of the stick but at the single place where the stick ends.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
not yet recorded
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.
No published certificate bears this kami yet.