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 ("Grass-Cutting Sword"). In folklore, the sword represents the virtue of valor. Legends The history of the extends into legend. According to , the god Susanoo encountered a grieving family of ("gods of the land") headed by in Izumo Province. When Susanoo inquired of Ashinazuchi, he told him that his family was being terrorized 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 [masquerades as] Kushinada-hime") to have her company during battle, he detailed his plan into steps. He instructed that eight vats of (rice wine) be prepared and 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 ), chopping off each head and then proceeded to do the same to the tails. In the fourth tail, he discovered a great sword inside the body of the serpent which he called . He presented the sword to the goddess Amaterasu to settle an old grievance. Generations later, during the reign of the 12th Emperor Keikō, was given to the great warrior, Yamato Takeru, as part of a pair of gifts given by his aunt, Yamatohime-no-mikoto, 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 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