=Susa no wo=.--The history of Susa no wo[104] illustrates the tendency of Nature-Gods to have their original character obscured by the anthropomorphic fancies of successive myth-makers. The _Kojiki_ and _Nihongi_ accounts of him are extremely vague and contradictory. Later Japanese, writers have identified him with the Moon-God, with an Indian Hades deity named Godzu Tennô, and with Emma, the Rhadamanthus of the Buddhist Hell. He has also been made a God of Pestilence, of Love and Wedlock, or of War. European scholars have described him as a "rotating-heavens God" or as "evidently a human being." Dr. Buckley, of Chicago, was the first to suggest[105] that he is the Rain-storm. We need not adopt every detail of this scholar's explanations, and indeed no one theory can solve all the problems presented by the mutually inconsistent stories related of this deity, but there can be no hesitation in accepting Dr. Buckley's view as substantially correct. It is as the Rain-storm that he is "continually weeping, wailing, and fuming with rage"; that he "weeps the mountains bare and the seas and rivers dry"; that he is a lover of destruction;[106] that "by reason of the fierceness of his divine nature he causes a commotion in the sea and makes the hills and mountains groan aloud" when he ascends through cloud and mist to visit his elder sister the Sun-Goddess. Torrent Goddesses are born from the fragments of his sword. He breaks down the divisions between the rice-fields and defiles his sister's dwelling, disgusting her so that she hides in a cave and leaves the world to darkness. He is further represented as going down to earth at the season of continuous rains, and as wearing a broad hat and a rain-coat. When he marries, the nuptial hut to which he retires with his wife is built of thick clouds. The sword which he takes from the serpent's tail is called _ama no mura-kumo_, that is to say, "the gathering clouds of Heaven." Another appropriate name for the weapon of a rain-storm deity is _kusa-nagi_, "the herb-queller." His wife's name, Inada-hime (the rice-field lady), is probably not without significance. But mythology is rarely consistent. An explanation which suits one episode of a story may fail altogether when applied to others. There is nothing of the rain-storm about the Susa no wo who rescues a Japanese Andromeda from the great serpent which comes to devour her, or in the provider of timber and fruit-trees for mankind, or in the names and attributes of his very numerous children. His visit to Korea can hardly have a rain-storm significance. Moreover, it is impossible to pass over the explicit statement of the _Nihongi_ that he was appointed to rule the land of Yomi. A _Kojiki_ myth[107] gives an account of his abode here in which no trace of his rain-storm quality is perceptible.