The Tale of Okuninushi and the Hare
At a Glance
- Central figures: Okuninushi, youngest of many brothers and later a kami of healing and prosperity; the white hare of Inaba, a divine messenger; and the Princess of Inaba, whom all the brothers wish to marry.
- Setting: The road to Inaba, in the age of the gods; the story comes from Japanese Shinto mythology and is among the earliest episodes depicting Okuninushi’s character.
- The turn: After Okuninushi’s brothers give the skinless hare cruel advice that worsens its wounds, Okuninushi arrives last - burdened with luggage - and offers genuine healing: fresh water and soft cattail pollen.
- The outcome: The hare is healed and, revealed as a divine messenger, foretells that Okuninushi alone will win the hand of the Princess of Inaba - a prophecy that comes true.
- The legacy: Okuninushi’s shrine, Izumo Taisha, remains one of the most important in Japan, where people still pray for good fortune, health, and harmonious relationships.
The hare was lying at the side of the road with its skin entirely gone. Not scratched, not wounded in the ordinary way - stripped, the raw flesh exposed to the air, every movement an agony. Okuninushi’s brothers had already passed it. They had heard its story, found it entertaining, and given their advice. Now they were ahead on the road to Inaba, unencumbered, walking toward the princess they each intended to marry.
Okuninushi came last, as he always did, bent under the weight of his brothers’ luggage. He saw the hare. He stopped.
The Crossing and the Shark
The hare had started on an island, separated from the mainland by open sea. It wanted to cross. It had no boat and no wings, so it did what it could - it found a group of sharks resting near the shore and told them it wanted to count their number, to see whether sharks or hares were more numerous in the world. The sharks, curious or perhaps vain, lined themselves up across the water from the island to the coast. The hare hopped across their backs, counting aloud, all the way to the final shark before the shore.
There it made its mistake. It laughed and told the last shark the truth: there had been no counting, no comparison. The hare had used them as a bridge and would now step onto land. The shark, enraged, lunged and stripped every hair from the hare’s body before it could leap free. The hare reached the mainland, but barely, and collapsed in the road where Okuninushi’s brothers would eventually find it.
What the Brothers Advised
They listened to the hare’s story with the mild amusement of people who are not suffering. The hare asked what it should do to heal. Okuninushi’s brothers told it to go down to the sea, bathe in the salt water, and then lie in the sun to dry.
The hare did as they said. The salt entered every raw edge of skin. The sun tightened what the salt had inflamed. By the time Okuninushi arrived, the hare was in worse condition than before - curled in the dirt, shaking, the wounds cracked and weeping.
Fresh Water and Cattail Pollen
Okuninushi set down the luggage. He crouched beside the hare and asked what had happened. The hare told him - the sharks, the boast, the stripping of the fur, and then the brothers’ advice and what that advice had done.
Okuninushi told the hare to go to the mouth of a nearby river and wash itself in the fresh water there. No salt. Fresh water only, to cleanse the wounds without drawing them further open. Then, when it had washed and the skin had begun to calm, it should find cattails and roll in their soft pollen - let the pollen settle against the raw places and protect them while the skin knit back together.
The hare went to the river. It washed. The sting of the salt rinsed away and the water was cool and clean. It found the cattails at the water’s edge, their heads dense and yellow with pollen, and it rolled among them until the pollen clung to every wound. It lay still for a time. The pain quieted. When it stood again, its fur had begun to grow back - fine and white, softer than before.
The Prophecy
The hare returned to where Okuninushi waited and stood before him with its fur restored. Then it said what it was: a divine messenger, a creature that moved between the visible and the unseen, and it had been watching all of them - the brothers who laughed, and this youngest one who had set down his burden to help.
It told Okuninushi plainly: his brothers would not marry the Princess of Inaba. He would. Not because he was the strongest, not because he had walked fastest or argued best, but because of what he had just done beside the road.
Okuninushi listened. He picked up the luggage again and continued walking.
The Road to Inaba
His brothers arrived at the princess’s home before him and were turned away, one by one. The princess had no interest in any of them. By the time Okuninushi reached the end of the road, still carrying what his brothers had made him carry, she was waiting.
The hare’s words proved exact. The Princess of Inaba chose Okuninushi, and the brothers who had walked ahead of him, unencumbered and confident, walked home without her. Okuninushi’s journey to Inaba was the first of many trials - he would go on to build a kingdom, descend to the realm of the dead, and ultimately become the great kami of the earthly realm, the protector of those who suffer and those who need healing. But it began here, on a dusty road, with a skinless hare and a choice to stop.
Izumo Taisha, his great shrine, still stands on the coast of Shimane. People travel there to pray for health, for fortunate marriages, for the mending of what has come apart. The priests there say that the relationships between all people in Japan are decided at Izumo - that the gods who govern such things convene there each autumn while the rest of the country calls that month Kannazuki, the month without gods. At Izumo alone, they call it Kamiari-zuki - the month the gods arrive.