id="id00159">*According to the Records, it is the attendants of the goddess that suffer injury.

**Referring to this episode, Aston writes in his Nihongi: "Amaterasu-o-mi-Kami is throughout the greater part of this narrative an anthropomorphic deity, with little that is specially characteristic of her solar functions. Here, however, it is plainly the sun itself which witholds its light and leaves the world to darkness. This inconsistency, which has greatly exercised the native theologians, is not peculiar to Japanese myth."

Then follows a scene perhaps the most celebrated in all the mythological legends; a scene which was the origin of the sacred dance in Japan and which furnished to artists in later ages a frequent motive. The "eight hundred myriads" of Kami—so numerous have the denizens of the "plain of high heaven" unaccountably become—assemble in the bed of the "tranquil river"* to confer about a means of enticing the goddess from her retirement. They entrust the duty of forming a plan to the Kami of "thought combination," now heard of for the first time as a son of one of the two producing Kami, who, with the "great central" Kami, constituted the original trinity of heavenly denizens. This deity gathers together a number of barn-yard fowl to signal sunrise, places the Kami of the "strong arm" at the entrance of the cave into which the goddess has retired, obtains iron from the "mines of heaven" and causes it to be forged into an "eight-foot" mirror, appoints two Kami to procure from Mount Kagu a "five-hundred branched" sakaki tree (cleyera Japonica), from whose branches the mirror together with a "five-hundred beaded" string of curved jewels and blue and white streamers of hempen cloth and paper-mulberry cloth are suspended, and causes divination to be performed with the shoulder blade of a stag.

*The Milky Way.

Then, while a grand liturgy is recited, the "heaven-startling" Kami, having girdled herself with moss, crowned her head with a wreath of spindle-tree leaves and gathered a bouquet of bamboo grass, mounts upon a hollow wooden vessel and dances, stamping so that the wood resounds and reciting the ten numerals repeatedly. Then the "eight-hundred myriad" Kami laugh in unison, so that the "plain of high heaven" shakes with the sound, and the Sun goddess, surprised that such gaiety should prevail in her absence, looks out from the cave to ascertain the cause. She is taunted by the dancer, who tells her that a greater than she is present, and the mirror being thrust before her, she gradually comes forward, gazing into it with astonishment; whereupon the Kami of the "strong arm" grasps her hand and drags her out, while two other Kami* stretch behind her a rope made of straw, pulled up by the roots,** to prevent her return, and sunshine once more floods the "plain of high heaven."

*These two are the ancestors of the Kami of the Nakatomi and the Imibe hereditary corporations, who may be described as the high priests of the indigenous cult of Japan.

**This kind of rope called shime-nawa, an abbreviation of shiri-kume-nawa may be seen festooning the portals of any Shinto shrine.

The details of this curious legend deserve attention for the sake of their close relation to the observances of the Shinto cult. Moreover, the mythology now takes a new departure. At the time of Izanagi's return from hades, vague reference is made to human beings, but after Susanoo's departure from the "plain of high heaven," he is represented as holding direct converse with them. There is an interlude which deals with the foodstuffs of mortals. Punished with a fine of a great number of tables* of votive offerings, his beard cut off, and the nails of his fingers and toes pulled out, Susanoo is sentenced to expulsion from heaven. He seeks sustenance from the Kami of food, and she responds by taking from the orifices of her body various kinds of viands which she offers to him. But he, deeming himself insulted, kills her, whereupon from her corpse are born rice, millet, small and large beans, and barley. These are taken by one of the two Kami of production, and by him they are caused to be used as seeds.

*The offerings of food in religious services were always placed upon small, low tables.

Thereafter Susanoo descends to a place at the headwaters of the river Hi (Izumo province). Seeing a chop-stick float down the stream, he infers the existence of people higher up the river, and going in search of them, finds an old man and an old woman lamenting over and caressing a girl. The old man says that he is an earthly Kami, son of the Kami of mountains, who was one of the thirty-five Kami borne by Izanami before her departure for hades. He explains that he had originally eight daughters, but that every year an eight-forked serpent has come from the country of Koshi and devoured one of the maidens, so that there remains only Lady Wonderful, whose time to share her sisters' fate is now at hand. It is a huge monster, extending over eight valleys and eight hills, its eyes red like winter cherries, its belly bloody and inflamed, and its back overgrown with moss and conifers. Susanoo, having announced himself as the brother of the Sun goddess, receives Lady Wonderful and at once transforms her into a comb which he places in his hair. He then instructs the old man and his wife to build a fence with eight gates, placing in every gate a vat of rice wine.

Presently the serpent arrives, drinks the wine, and laying down its heads to sleep, is cut to pieces by Susanoo with his ten-span sabre. In the body of the serpent the hero finds a sword, "great and sharp," which he sends to the Sun goddess, at whose shrine in Ise it is subsequently found and given to the famous warrior, Yamato-dake, when he is setting out on his expedition against the Kumaso of the north. The sword is known as the "Herb-queller." Susanoo then builds for himself and Lady Wonderful a palace at Suga in Izumo, and composes a celebrated verse of Japanese poetry.* Sixth in descent from the offspring of this union is the "Kami of the great land," called also the "Great-Name Possessor," or the "Kami of the reed plains," or the "Kami of the eight thousand spears," or the "Kami of the great land of the living," the last name being antithetical to Susanoo's title of "Ruler of Hades."

*"Many clouds arise,
On all sides a manifold fence,
To receive within it the spouse,
They form a manifold fence
Ah! that manifold fence."

Several legends are attached to the name of this multinominal being—legends in part romantic, in part supernatural, and in part fabulous. His eighty brethren compel him to act as their servant when they go to seek the hand of Princess Yakami of Inaba. But on the way he succours a hare which they have treated brutally and the little animal promises that he, not they, shall win the princess, though he is only their baggage-bearer. Enraged at the favour she shows him, they seek in various ways to destroy him: first by rolling down on him from a mountain a heated rock; then by wedging him into the cleft of a tree, and finally by shooting him. But he is saved by his mother, and takes refuge in the province of Kii (the Land of Trees) at the palace of the "Kami of the great house."* Acting on the latter's advice, he visits his ancestor, Susanoo, who is now in hades, and seeks counsel as to some means of overcoming his eighty enemies. But instead of helping him, that unruly Kami endeavours to compass his death by thrusting him into a snake-house; by putting him into a nest of centipedes and wasps, and finally by shooting an arrow into a moor, sending him to seek it and then setting fire to the grass. He is saved from the first two perils through the agency of miraculous scarves given to him by Princess Forward, Susanoo's daughter, who has fallen in love with him; and from the last dilemma a mouse instructs him how to emerge.