Okami celebrated its 15th birthday this week, which reminded me of a series of articles I wrote about 10 years ago (oh my goodness), about the myths and folklore behind the game. Back then, I was young and pretentious, and would use phrases like: “literary allusions” with a straight face in my posts. Today, I (hopefully) know better, but I still fondly remember the series, and in honor of our favorite sun goddess’ birthday, I want to share some of those stories here today. You’d be surprised at how many characters are featured in Japanese mythology, because wolves were doing the Wolf Among Us fairy tale thing all together way before Bigby even made a brief appearance. Telltale’s Eye was.

Let’s start with the great, big, obvious thing: the story that defines the entire first act of the game, the tale of Amaterasu, Susanoo, and Orochi. The game employs a few different versions of this mythology, but also adds its own fantastic twists.

According to legend, both Amaterasu and Susanoo were created by the creator god Izanagi when he wanted to save his wife Izanami from the underworld. Like their in-game counterparts, Amaterasu became a Shinto goddess of the sun, while Susanoo became a god of storms. But one day, Susanoo got drunk and killed one of Amii’s servants, causing Amii to lock herself in a cave in anger. Darkness fell on the world (she is the sun goddess after all), and light only returned when the surviving gods lured her out with a sacred mirror (the “Yata no Kagami”) and some sacred jewels.

Meanwhile, Susanoo was banished from heaven and forced to live among mortals. There he encountered an old couple whose daughters had been eaten by the eight-headed monster Yamata no Orochi. Their last daughter, Kushinada-hime, was about to leave as the final victim, but Susanoo offered him a deal: he could marry Kushinada if he defeated Orochi. To do this, he transformed Kushinada into a comb to hide her from Orochi (of course) and ordered the pair to brew eight bottles of sake. When Orochi arrived, unable to resist, he first drank a quick cup, and eventually each head drank the whole bottle. With the eight tomcats inside his body, Orochi soon fainted and fell asleep, giving Susanoo the perfect opportunity to save him from his predicament by chopping him into pieces.

If you’ve played Okami, much of it may be familiar, but I find the way the story has been interpreted and remixed most fascinating. For example, Susanoo is still a descendant of (Iza)Nagi, but both are relatively powerless before the power of Orochi. That also applies to Amy and Shiranui the White Wolf, who once helped Nagi, and only when they combine their respective powers can they defeat the great dragon. Plus, this finally explains Amy’s fighting technique!

The reason why Amy was trapped in the cave is also different in the game. Here, Shiranui’s death causes light to disappear from the world, and Amy makes a triumphant return from Shiranui’s statue. I mean, she was also turned into a wolf for this story, so anything is possible really, but it explains the origin of Amy’s legendary weapons: her beloved mirror, and ultimately the magatama.

Amy’s little buddy Issun is also a reference to the story “Issun-boshi” (or “One-inch Boy”), which tells the story of a man the size of a human fingertip who uses a needle as a sword and tries to make a fortune as a miniature samurai. Despite his small size, he manages to save the princess from a demon with a magic hammer. Issun is swallowed whole, but when he stabs the monster’s stomach with the needle, the monster spits him out again, causing him to drop his hammer and run away. As a reward for Issun-boshi’s bravery, the princess uses her hammer to restore him to normal size, and the two live happily ever after.

Issun still has his eye on the women of Ogami, and the size-changing hammer appears when Ami must enter Seian’s sealed-off palace. Similarly, Ami’s little tour of the Emperor’s mouth mimics Issun-boshi’s descent into the role of monster, and we eventually learn that Issun-boshi was once a samurai before aiming to become a painter.

But the protagonist isn’t the only one to find roots in Japanese folklore. One of my favorite discoveries while putting together this series was the story behind the strange two cutters of Taka Pass. You know those evil houses in the valley that are scary for no reason? Well, they are based on the story “The Sparrow with the Cut Tongue”. This story is about a poor old woodcutter and his greedy wife who one day find an injured sparrow in the forest. The man wants to take care of the bird, but the woman wants to eat it, and one day when her husband goes out, she cuts out the tongue of the sparrow that has eaten all the food.

The sparrow flies home and the old man goes looking for it. Finally he comes across a sparrow inn where he is warmly welcomed and allowed to rest. He ends up bringing back a treasure in a box, but when his wife finds out, she also tries her luck. But since she was evil, her box is full of snakes and horrible monsters, and the shock of finding all these horrible things makes her stumble and fall off the mountain, and she probably dies.

In the game, Mr. Cutter has a pretty tough job here. He changes from a kind old man to another evil bastard like his wife. But they capture Chun, the daughter of the head of the neighboring Sparrow clan, intending to eat her later. Their surname Cutter refers to the cut-out tongue of a sparrow in folk tales. Similarly, the Sparrow Clan actually has an inn in Sasa Sanctuary, which is one of the key locations in the second act of the game. If you peek around some of the rooms, you’ll find a man who actually lies down and calls himself a Hunter. He reminds me of the first friendly old man in the story, who once rescued an injured Sparrow.

I could go on and on. There’s the story of Tama no Mae, which is the basis of the mid-game story arc, where Amie battles the Dark Lord Ninetales and Issun’s favorite “big breasted beauty” Rao, and there’s also the story surrounding Otohime, the queen. The Dragonians who appear in the game, the daughter of the mythical sea god Ryujin, and the fisherman “Urashima Taro” who saves a turtle from children who tormented it on the beach, are also incorporated into this section of the game. If I were to tell you all about this, I’d probably be here all day (there’s a reason why I split the original series into multiple articles). If you want to learn more, you can find it all here.

Finally, I will say goodbye with a story about Ainu history and mythological figure “Okikurumi.” The Ainu people are native to northern Japan, originally from what is now Hokkaido and its neighboring islands, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. As Amy travels through the frozen lands of the North Kamuy, several elements of her culture appear. The word “Kamui” itself represents the Ainu animistic belief that everything has a soul (“Kamui”) (also reflected in the animal headdresses worn by the island’s inhabitants). The Oina people who live there in the game are also named after an Ainu word that means short epic poems about gods.

On the other hand, Okikurumi is the god who taught the Ainu how to hunt and fish, and is often portrayed as the hero and father of the Ainu people’s gods. He has several names (the main ones are Ainu-rakuru and Eoinakamui) and is involved in many feats. But the most relevant for us is the story of how he saved the Ainu sun goddess Tokapukap Kamui (her version of Amaterasu) from an evil owl demon. (Fun fact: Historically, Okikurumi is also the Ainu name of the Japanese hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who was also the basis for Waka’s character, as his childhood nickname was Ushiwakamaru.)

In the game, the stubborn and bloodthirsty Oki takes over. Okikurumi’s role, but here his power is at his head. While he remains a heroic figure among the Oina tribe, his desire for revenge and naive belief that only he can defeat the evil owl demons Lechku and Neshku suggest that it is he, not Ami, who needs to be saved. But just like Okami’s interpretation of the Susanoo mythology immediately at the start of the game, working alone is not enough. Instead, Ami and Oki can only defeat Lechku and Neshku together, allowing Oki to become the father figure and teacher the Oina tribe deserves.

This, again, is just the tip of the iceberg of all the other myths and stories you can find in Okami’s final act, including Issun’s miniature brother Ponkuru, Oina’s shaman Taskuru, and the origins of the demon Chikapukamui, the owl god, which is almost certainly the basis for our friends Lechku and Nechku.

And there’s plenty more in the rest of the game, the most famous of which is probably “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” a story that was recently made into a stunningly beautiful film, “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” by Studio Ghibli. The story of an old couple who find a young girl from the Moon Tribe inside a glowing bamboo shoot, Kaguya and her supposed grandfather, Takeshi, are also in Okami.

Kaguya’s story is truly fascinating. Not only is she one of the earliest examples of science fiction in Japan, but in some versions of her story, she is sent to Earth to save it from a celestial war between the gods. And that is exactly what happened over the course of Okami, where Ami tries to stop the destruction of the universe by the evil Yami. Seen in this way, one can almost say that Kaguya’s story is the true legend behind the epic tale of Okami, where everything happens in the context of one great mythical showdown. Not bad for a little bamboo shoot, right?