Myths, Religions & Legends Power Ranking TOP100
I wrote a book ranking the most powerful gods, monsters, and heroes from world mythology, religion, and legend in order of strength! Of course, the rankings reflect a great deal of my own subjective judgment, but the reasoning behind each placement is grounded in the lore and episodes of each mythology, so I think it’s a book that will feel reasonably convincing.
This time I’d like to introduce some of the characters featured in the book’s ranking. Of course, many more characters appear in the ranking beyond those introduced here, so I think anyone interested in mythology, religion, and legend will enjoy it!
Rank 48: Susanoo (Japanese Mythology)
Overview
Susanoo is one of the most tempestuous gods in Japanese mythology, known as the deity who governs storms and raging winds. He is one of the “Three Noble Children” (Mihashira no Uzu no Miko) born from Izanagi, and together with Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, holds the highest divine rank in Japanese mythology.
He was originally the god ruling over the seas, but abandoned his role and was exiled for attempting to visit his mother Izanami.
On his way to meet Izanami, he stopped at the Plain of High Heaven to say farewell to his sister Amaterasu — but she misunderstood his arrival as an attack and greeted him in full armor.
The mythology describes the very heavens and earth rumbling with every step Susanoo took, revealing that he possessed the power to cause natural disasters simply by moving. Susanoo’s most famous episode is the “Slaying of Yamata no Orochi.”
Yamata no Orochi is described as “so enormous it spans eight valleys and eight peaks” — the greatest and most powerful monster in Japanese mythology — but Susanoo prepared a special sacred sake and used it to put the creature to sleep, then used the sword Ame no Habakiri to cut off all eight of its heads and eight of its tails.
It is worth noting that one of the Three Sacred Treasures, the “Ama no Murakumo no Tsurugi” (later known as the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi), was found inside Orochi’s tail, and the Ame no Habakiri chipped when it struck against it.
Reason for This Ranking
Susanoo might be called the archetype of the “banished to another world” narrative — he is regarded as the most powerful war god in Japanese mythology, and his fierce temperament combined with his divine nature caused numerous incidents in the myths.
In the slaying of Yamata no Orochi, he put the creature to sleep with sake first before defeating it, so his strength is honestly rather hard to judge directly. However, given the monster’s enormous size, perhaps only Susanoo could have killed it even after putting it to sleep.
The real question is whether Susanoo could have defeated Yamata no Orochi without the sake as a stratagem — and I believe the answer is “he would have struggled, but he could have managed.”
Of course, Yamata no Orochi’s true strength is not depicted in the myths, so this is purely speculation — but given Susanoo’s high divine rank and his power as a war god, I think it is quite plausible he could have won in a direct confrontation.
With all of this in mind, I placed him at this position in the ranking.
