The foremost of the earthly kami, descended from Susanoo. He bears many names — Onamuji, Ashihara-shikoo, Yachihoko, Utsushikunitama — and the number of them stands for the number of his stories.
Among the gods of the chronicles he is the one most tried, most often killed, and most often brought back.
Travelling to Inaba behind his eighty brothers, he found a hare weeping with its skin torn off. It had tried to cross the sea by tricking the sea-beasts, been flayed for it, and then been told by the brothers who passed first to wash in salt water and stand in the wind — which made it far worse.
Onamuji told it to wash in fresh water and roll in cattail pollen. The hare healed, and foretold that he, not his brothers, would win Yakami-hime. What the brothers gave was advice that sounded right; what he gave was treatment that worked. That difference is the whole point of the story.
The eighty brothers heated a boulder red, rolled it down on him saying it was a boar, and burned him to death. His mother's grief restored him; they killed him again, crushed in a split tree. He came back a second time.
Fleeing to the land of roots where Susanoo dwelt, he was set trials — a chamber of snakes, a chamber of centipedes and wasps, a burning field. Helped by Susanoo's daughter Suseri-bime and taught by a mouse, he survived, and escaped carrying Susanoo's great sword, bow and heavenly koto. Susanoo pursued him to the pass of the underworld and called after him: with that sword and bow drive off your brothers, and become Okuninushi, master of the great land. The name was given by the god who had tried to kill him.
With Sukunabikona he made and firmed the land. When Sukunabikona departed for the eternal realm, a kami came shining over the sea, and he enshrined it on Mount Miwa and carried on the work.
Later the High Plain of Heaven demanded the land. After the answers of his sons Kotoshironushi and Takeminakata, he ceded it — on the condition that a palace be raised for him as great as the halls of heaven. That palace is Izumo Taisha.
The land itself, the binding of ties, and medicine. Izumo Taisha in Shimane is the head shrine. In the tenth lunar month the gods of Japan are said to gather at Izumo, so that the month is called the month with gods there, and the month without gods everywhere else.
A stick full of injuries: a break that has closed over, wood split yet still holding together, something that looks to have died once and kept its shape.
The Bureau sends this kami down on a stick that is damaged and still stands. He was killed twice, came back twice, and built a country while changing names. He does not settle on an unmarked stick.
Note: this section is the Bureau's own reading, not a record from the chronicles.
The share of issued certificates in which this kami appeared. It shifts as more sticks are appraised. Variant spellings are reconciled before counting.