# Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882)/Introduction

A Translation of the “Ko-ji-ki,”
or
“Records of Ancient Matters.”
(古事記)
By Basil Hall Chamberlain.
[Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan April 12th, May 10th, and June 21st, 1882.]
Introduction.
Of all the mass of Japanese literature, which lies before us as the result of nearly twelve centuries of book-making, the most important monument is the work entitled “Ko-ji-ki” or “Records of Ancient Matters,” which was completed in A. D. 712. It is the most important because it has preserved for us more faithfully than any other book the mythology, the manners, the language, and the traditional history of ​Ancient Japan. Indeed it is the earliest authentic connected literary product of that large division of the human race which has been variously denominated Turanian, Scythian and Altaïc, and it even precedes by at least a century the most ancient extant literary compositions of non-Aryan India. Soon after the date of its compilation, most of the salient features of distinctive Japanese nationality were buried under a superincumbent mass of Chinese culture, and it is to these “Records” and to a very small number of other ancient works, such as the poems of the “Collection of a Myriad Leaves” and the Shintō Rituals, that the investigator must look, if he would not at every step be misled into attributing originality to modern customs and ideas, which have simply been borrowed wholesale from the neighbouring continent.
It is of course not pretended that even these “Records” are untouched by Chinese influence: that influence is patent in the very characters with which the text is written. But the influence is less, and of another kind. If in the traditions preserved and in the customs alluded to we detect the Early Japanese in the act of borrowing from China and perhaps even from India, there is at least on our author’s part no ostentatious decking out in Chinese trappings of what he believed to be original matter, after the fashion of the writers who immediately succeeded him. It is true that this abstinence on his part makes his compilation less pleasant to the ordinary native taste than that of subsequent historians, who put fine Chinese phrases into the mouths of emperors and heroes supposed to have lived before the time when intercourse with China began. But the European student, who reads all such books, not as a pastime but in order to search for facts, will prefer the more genuine composition. It is also accorded the first place by the most learned of the native literati.
Of late years this paramount importance of the “Records of Ancient Matters” to investigators of Japanese subjects generally has become well-known to European scholars; and even versions of a few passages are to be found scattered through the pages of their writings. Thus Mr. Aston has given us, in the Chrestomathy appended to his “Grammar of the Japanese Written Language,” a couple of interesting extracts; Mr. Satow has illustrated by occasional extracts his elaborate papers on the Shintō Rituals printed in these “Transactions,” and a remarkable essay ​by Mr. Kempermann published in the Fourth Number of the “Mittheilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur und Völkerkunde Ostasiens,” though containing no actual translations, bases on the accounts given in the “Records” some conjectures regarding the origines of Japanese civilization which are fully substantiated by more minute research. All that has yet appeared in any European language does not, however, amount to one-twentieth part of the whole, and the most erroneous views of the style and scope of the book and its contents have found their way into popular works on Japan. It is hoped that the true nature of the book, and also the true nature of the traditions, customs, and ideas of the Early Japanese, will be made clearer by the present translation, the object of which is to give the entire work in a continuous English version, and thus to furnish the European student with a text to quote from, or at least to use as a guide in consulting the original. The only object aimed at has been a rigid and literal conformity with the Japanese text. Fortunately for this endeavour (though less fortunately for the student), one of the difficulties which often beset the translator of an Oriental classic is absent in the present case. There is no beauty of style, to preserve some trace of which he may be tempted to sacrifice a certain amount of accuracy. The “Records” sound queer and bald in Japanese, as will be noticed further on; and it is therefore right, even from a stylistic point of view, that they should sound bald and queer in English. The only portions of the text which, from obvious reasons, refuse to lend themselves to translation into English after this fashion are the indecent portions. But it has been thought that there could be no objection to rendering them into Latin,—Latin as rigidly literal as is the English of the greater part.
After these preliminary remarks, it will be most convenient to take the several points which a study of the “Records” and the turning of them into English suggest, and to consider the same one by one. These points are:
   * I.—Authenticity and Nature of the Text, together with Bibliographical Notes.
   * II.—Details concerning the Method of Translation.
   * III.—The “Nihon-Gi” or “Chronicles of Japan.”
   * IV.—Manners and Customs of the Early Japanese. ​
   * V.—Religious and Political Ideas of the Early Japanese. Beginnings of the Japanese Nation, and Credibility of the National Traditions.
I.
The Text and Its Authenticity, Together with Bibliographical Notes.
The latter portion of the Preface to the “Records of Ancient Matters” is the only documentary authority for the origin of the work. It likewise explains its scope. But though in so doing the author descends to a more matter-of-fact style than the high-sounding Chinese phrases and elaborate allusions with which he had set forth, still his meaning may be found to lack somewhat of clearness, and it will be as well to have the facts put into language more intelligible to the European student. This having already been done by Mr. Satow in his paper on the “Revival of Pure Shintô,” it will be best simply to quote his words. They are as follows: “The Emperor Temmu, at what portion of his reign is not mentioned, lamenting that the records possessed by the chief families contained many errors, resolved to take steps to preserve the true traditions from oblivion. He therefore had the records carefully examined, compared, and weeded of their faults. There happened to be in his household a person of marvellous memory named Hiyeda no Are, who could repeat without mistake the contents of any document he had ever seen, and never forgot anything that he had heard. Temmu Tennô took the pains to instruct this person in the genuine traditions and ‘old language of former ages,’' and to make him repeat them until he had the whole by heart. ‘Before the undertaking was completed,’ which probably means before it could be committed to writing, the Emperor died, and for twenty-five years Are’s memory was the sole depository of what afterwards received the title of Kojiki or Furu-koto-bumi as it is read by Motoori. At the end of this interval the Empress Gemmiô ordered Yasumaro to write it down from the ​mouth of Are, which accounts for the completion of the manuscript in so short a time as four months and a half. Are’s age at this date is not stated, but as he was twenty-eight years of age some time in the reign of Temmu Tennô, it could not possibly have been more than sixty-eight, while taking into account the previous order of Temmu Tennô in 681 for the compilation of a history, and the statement that he was engaged on the composition of the Kojiki at the time of his death in 686, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that it belongs to about the last year of his reign, in which case Are was only fifty-three in 711.”
The previous order of the Emperor Tem-mu mentioned in the above extract is usually supposed to have resulted in the compilation of a history which was early lost. But Hirata gives reasons for supposing that this and the project of the “Records of Ancient Matters” were identical. If this opinion be accepted, the “Records,” while the oldest existing Japanese book, are, not the third, but the second historical work of which mention has been preserved, one such having been compiled in the year 620, but lost in a fire in the year 645. It will thus be seen that it is rather hard to say whom we should designate as the author of the work. The Emperor Tem-mu, Hiyeda no Are, and Yasumaro may all three lay claim to that title. The question, however, is of no importance to us, and the share taken by Are may well have been exaggerated in the telling. What seems to remain as the residue of fact is that the plan of a purely national history originated with the Emperor Tem-mu and was finally carried out under his successor by Yasumaro, one of the Court Nobles.
Fuller evidence and confirmatory evidence from other sources as to the origin of our “Records” would doubtless be very acceptable. But the very small number of readers and writers at that early date, and the almost simultaneous compilation of a history (the “Chronicles of Japan”) which was better calculated to hit the taste of the age, make the absence of such evidence almost unavoidable. In any case, and only noticing in passing the fact that Japan was never till quite recent years noted for such wholesale literary forgeries (for Motowori’s condemnation of the “Chronicles of Old Matters of Former Ages” has been considered rash by later scholars),—it cannot be too much emphasized that in this ​instance authenticity is sufficiently proved by internal evidence. It is hard to believe that any forger living later than the eighth century of our era should have been so well able to discard the Chinese “padding” to the old traditions, which, after the acceptance by the Court of the “Chronicles of Japan,” had come to be generally regarded as an integral portion of those very traditions; and it is more unlikely still that he should have invented a style so little calculated to bring his handiwork into repute. He would either have written in fair Chinese, like the mass of early Japanese prose writers (and his Preface shows that he could do so if he were so minded); or, if the tradition of there having been a history written in the native tongue had reached him, he would have made his composition unmistakably Japanese in form by arranging the characters in the order demanded by Japanese syntax, and by the consistent use of characters employed phonetically to denote particles and terminations, after the fashion followed in the Rituals, and developed (apparently before the close of the ninth century) into what is technically known as the “Mixed Phonetic Style” (Kana-mazhiri), which has remained ever since as the most convenient vehicle for writing the language. As it is, his quasi-Chinese construction, which breaks down every now and then to be helped up again by a few Japanese words written phonetically, is surely the first clumsy attempt at combining two divergent elements. What however is simply incredible is that, if the supposed forger lived even only a hundred years later than A.D. 712, he should so well have imitated or divined the archaisms of that early period. For the eighth century of our era was a great turning point in the Japanese language, the Archaic Dialect being then replaced by the Classical; and as the Chinese language and literature were alone thenceforward considered worthy the student’s attention, there was no means of keeping up an acquaintance with the diction of earlier reigns, neither do we find the poets of the time ever attempting to adorn their verse with obsolete phraseology. That was an affectation reserved for a later epoch, when the diffusion of books rendered it possible. The poets of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries apparently wrote as they spoke; and the test of language alone would almost allow of our arranging their compositions half century by half century, even without the dates which are given in many instances in the “Collection ​of a Myriad Leaves” and in the “Collection of Songs Ancient and Modern,”—the first two collections of poems published by imperial decree in the middle of the eighth, and at the commencement of the tenth, century respectively.
The above remarks are meant to apply more especially to the occasional Japanese words,—all of them Archaic,—which, as mentioned above, are used from time to time in the prose text of the “Records,” to help out the author’s meaning and to preserve names whose exact pronunciation he wished handed down. That he should have invented the Songs would be too monstrous a supposition for any one to entertain, even if we had not many of the same and other similar ones preserved in the pages of the “Chronicles of Japan,” a work which was undoubtedly completed in A.D. 720. The history of the Japanese language is too well known to us, we can trace its development and decay in too many documents reaching from the eighth century to the present time, for it to be possible to entertain the notion that the latest of these Songs, which have been handed down with minute care in a syllabic transcription, is posterior to the first half of the eighth century, while the majority must be ascribed to an earlier, though uncertain, date. If we refer the greater number of them in their present form to the sixth century, and allow a further antiquity of one or two centuries to others more ancient in sentiment and in grammatical usage, we shall probably be making a moderate estimate. It is an estimate, moreover, which obtains confirmation from the fact that the first notice we have of the use of writing in Japan dates from early in the fifth century; for it is natural to suppose that the Songs believed to have been composed by the gods and heroes of antiquity should have been among the first things to be written down, while the reverence in which they were held would in some cases cause them to be transcribed exactly as tradition had bequeathed them, even if unintelligible or nearly so, while in others the same feeling would lead to the correction of what were supposed to be errors or inelegancies. Finally it may be well to observe that the authenticity of the “Records” has never been doubted, though, as has already been stated, some of the native commentators have not hesitated to charge with spuriousness another of their esteemed ancient histories. Now it is unlikely that, in the war which has been waged between ​the partisans of the “Records” and those of the “Chronicles,” some flaw in the former’s title to genuineness and to priority should not have been discovered and pointed out if it existed.
During the Middle Ages, when no native Japanese works were printed, and not many others excepting the Chinese Classics and Buddhist Scriptures, the “Records of Ancient Matters” remained in manuscript in the hands of the Shintō priesthood. They were first printed in the year 1644, at the time when, peace having been finally restored to the country and the taste for reading having become diffused, the great mass of the native literature first began to emerge from the manuscript state. This very rare edition (which was reprinted in fac-simile in 1798) is indispensable to anyone who would make of the “Records” a special study. The next edition was by a Shintō priest, Deguchi Nobuyoshi, and appeared in 1687. It has marginal notes of no great value, and several emendations of the text. The first-mentioned of these two editions is commonly called the “Old Printed Edition” (舊印木), but has no title beyond that of the original work,—“Records of Ancient Matters.” The name of the other is “Records of Ancient Matters with Marginal Readings” (鼇頭古事記). Each is in three volumes. They were succeeded in 1789–1822 by Motowori’s great edition, entitled “Exposition of the Records of Ancient Matters” (古事記傳). This, which is perhaps the most admirable work of which Japanese erudition can boast, consists of forty-four large volumes, fifteen of which are devoted to the elucidation of the first volume of the original, seventeen to the second, ten to the third, and the rest to prolegomena, indexes, etc. To the ordinary student this Commentary will furnish all that he requires, and the charm of Motowori’s style will be found to shed a glamour over the driest parts of the original work. The author’s judgment only seems to fail him occasionally when confronted with the most difficult or corrupt passages, or with such as might be construed in a sense unfavourable to his predilections as an ardent Shintoist. He frequently quotes the opinions of his master Mabuchi, whose own treatise on this subject is so rare that the present writer has never seen a copy of it, nor does the public library of Tōkiō possess one. Later and less important editions are the “Records of Ancient Matters with the Ancient Reading” (古訓古事記), a reprint by one of Motowori’s pupils of the Chinese text and ​of his Master’s Kana reading of it without his Commentary, and useful for reference, though the title is a misnomer, 1803; the “Records of Ancient Matters with Marginal Notes” (古事記標註), by Murakami Tadanori, 1874; the “Records of Ancient Matters in the Syllabic Character” (假名古事記), by Sakata no Kaneyasu, 1874, a misleading book, as it gives the modern Kana reading with its arbitrarily inserted Honorifics and other departures from the actual text, as the ipsissima verba of the original work; the “Records of Ancient Matters Revised” (校正古事記), by Uyematsu Shigewoka, 1875. All these editions are in three volumes, and the “Records of Ancient Matters with the Ancient Reading” has also been reprinted in one volume on beautiful thin paper. Another in four volumes by Fujihara no Masaoki, 1871, entitled the “Records of Ancient Matters in the Divine Character” (神字古事記), is a real curiosity of literature, though otherwise of no value. In it the editor has been at the pains of reproducing the whole work, according to its modern Kana reading, in that adaptation of the Korean alphabetic writing which some modern Japanese authors have supposed to be characters of peculiar age and sanctity, used by the ancient gods of their country and named “Divine Characters” accordingly.
Besides these actual editions of the “Records of Ancient Matters,” there is a considerable mass of literature bearing less directly on the same work, and all of which cannot be here enumerated. It may be sufficient to mention the “Correct Account of the Divine Age” (神代正語) by Motowori, 8 Vols. 1789, and a commentary thereon entitled “Tokiha-Gusa” (神代正語常盤草) by Wosada Tominobu, from which the present translator has borrowed a few ideas; the “Sources of the Ancient Histories” (古史徴) and its sequel entitled “Exposition of the Ancient Histories” (古史傅), by Hirata Atsutane, begun printing in 1819,—works which are specially admirable from a philological point of view, and in which the student will find the solution of not a few difficulties which even to Motowori had been insuperable; the “Idzu no Chi-Waki” (稜威道別), by Tachibana no Moribe, begun printing in 1851, ​a useful commentary on the “Chronicles of Japan”; the “Idzu no Koto-Waki” (稜威語別), by the same author, begun printing in 1847, an invaluable help to a comprehension of the Songs contained in both the “Records” and the “Chronicles”; the “Examination of Difficult Words” (難語考, also entitled 山彦册子), in 3 Vols., 1831, a sort of dictionary of specially perplexing terms and phrases, in which light is thrown on many a verbal crux and much originality of thought displayed; and the “Perpetual Commentary on the Chronicles of Japan” (日本書記通證), by Tanigaha Shisei, 1762, a painstaking work written in the Chinese language, 23 Vols. Neither must the “Kō Gan Shō” (厚顔抄), a commentary on the Songs contained in the “Chronicles” and “Records” composed by the Buddhist priest Keichiū, who may be termed the father of the native school of criticism, be forgotten. It is true that most of Keichiū’s judgments on doubtful points have been superseded by the more perfect erudition of later days; but some few of his interpretations may still be followed with advantage. The “Kō Gan Shō,” which was finished in the year 1691, has never been printed. It is from these and a few others and from the standard dictionaries and general books of reference, such as the “Japanese Words Classified and Explained” (和名類聚鈔), the “Catalogue of Family Names” (姓氏録), and (coming down to more modern times) Arawi Hakuseki’s “Tōga” (東雅), that the translator has derived most assistance. The majority of the useful quotations from the dictionaries, etc., having been incorporated by Motowori in his “Commentary,” it has not often been necessary to mention them by name in the notes to the translation. At the same time the translator must express his conviction that, as the native authorities cannot possibly be dispensed with, so also must their assertions be carefully weighed and only accepted with discrimination by the critical European investigator. He must also thank Mr. Tachibana no Chimori, grandson of the eminent scholar Tachibana no Moribe, for kindly allowing him to make use of the manuscript of the unpublished portions of the “Idzu no Chi-Waki” and the “Idzu no Koto-Waki,” works indispensable to the comprehension of the more difficult portion of the text of the “Records.” To Mr. Satow he is indebted for the English and Latin equivalents of the Japanese botanical names, to Capt. Blakiston and Mr. Namiye Motokichi for similar assistance with regard to the zoological names.
​Comparing what has been said above with what the author tells us in his Preface, the nature of the text, so far as language is concerned, will be easily understood. The Songs are written phonetically, syllable by syllable, in what is technically known as Manyō-Gana, i.e. entire Chinese characters used to represent sound and not sense. The rest of the text, which is in prose, is very poor Chinese, capable (owing to the ideographic nature of the Chinese written character), of being read off into Japanese. It is also not only full of “Japonisms,” but irregularly interspersed with characters which turn the text into nonsense for a Chinaman, as they are used phonetically to represent certain Japanese words, for which the author could not find suitable Chinese equivalents. These phonetically written words prove, even apart from the notice in the Preface, that the text was never meant to be read as pure Chinese. The probability is that (sense being considered more important than sound) it was read partly in Chinese and partly in Japanese, according to a mode which has since been systematized and has become almost universal in this country even in the reading of genuine Chinese texts. The modern school of Japanese literati, who push their hatred of everything foreign to the bounds of fanaticism, contend however that this, their most ancient and revered book, was from the first intended to be read exclusively into Japanese. Drawing from the other sources of our knowledge of the Archaic Dialect, Motowori has even hazarded a restoration of the Japanese reading of the entire prose text, in the whole of which not a single Chinese word is used, excepting for the titles of the two Chinese books (the “Confucian Analects” and the “Thousand Character Essay”) which are said to have been brought over to Japan in the reign of the Emperor Ō-jin, and for the names of a Korean King and of three or four other Koreans and Chinese. Whatever may be their opinion on the question at issue, most European scholars, to ​whom the superior sanctity of the Japanese language is not an article of faith, will probably agree with Mr. Aston in denying to this conjectural restoration the credit of representing the genuine words into which Japanese eighth century students of history read off the text of the “Records.”
II. Method of Translation.
To the translator the question above mooted is not one of great importance. The text itself must form the basis of his version, and not any one’s,—not even Motowori’s,—private and particular reading of it. For this reason none of the Honorifics which Motowori inserts as prefixes to nouns and terminations to verbs have been taken any notice of, but the original has been followed, character by character, with as great fidelity as was attainable. The author too has his Honorifics; but he does not use them so plentifully or so regularly as it pleases Motowori to represent him as having intended to do. On the other hand, Motowori’s occasional emendations of the text may generally be accepted. They rarely extend to more than single words; and the errors in the earlier editions may frequently be shown to have arisen from careless copying of characters originally written, not in the square, but in the cursive form. The translator has separately considered each case where various readings occur, and has mentioned them in the Notes when they seemed of sufficient importance. In some few cases he has preferred a reading not approved by Motowori, but he always mentions Motowori’s reading in a Foot-note.
The main body of the text contains but little to perplex any one who has made a special study of the early Japanese writings, and it has already been noticed that there is an admirable exegetical literature at the student’s command. With the Songs embedded in the prose text the case is different, as some of them are among the most difficult things in the language, and the commentators frequently arrive at most discordant interpretations of the obscurer passages. In the present version particulars concerning each Song have, except in a very few cases where ​comment appeared superfluous, been given in a Foot-note, the general sense being usually first indicated, the meaning of particular expressions then explained, and various opinions mentioned when they seemed worthy of notice. Besides one or two terms of Japanese grammar, the only technical knowledge with which the readers of the Notes are necessarily credited is that of the use by the Japanese poets of what have been styled Pillow-Words, Pivots, and Prefaces; and those Pillow-Words which are founded on a jeu-de-mots or are of doubtful signification form, with the one exception mentioned below, the only case where anything contained in the original is omitted from the English version. After some consideration, it has been deemed advisable to print in an Appendix the Japanese text of all the Songs, transliterated into Roman. Students will thus find it easier to form their own opinion on the interpretation of doubtful passages. The importance likewise of these Songs, as the most ancient specimens of Altaïc speech, makes it right to give them as much publicity as possible.
The text of the “Records” is, like many other Japanese texts, completely devoid of breaks corresponding to the chapters and paragraphs into which European works are divided. With the occasional exception of a pause after a catalogue of gods or princes, and of notes inserted in smaller type and generally containing genealogies or indicating the pronunciation of certain words, the whole story, prose and verse, runs on from beginning to end with no interruptions other than those marked by the conclusion of Vol. I and by the death of each emperor in Vols. II and III. Faithfulness however scarcely seems to demand more than this statement; for a similarly continuous printing of the English version would attain no end but that of making a very dry piece of reading more arduous still. Moreover there are certain traditional names by which the various episodes of the history of the so-called “Divine Age” are known to the native scholars, and according to which the text of Vol. I may naturally be divided. The reigns of the emperors form a similar foundation for the analysis of Vols. II and III, which contain the the account of the “Human Age.” It has been thought that it would be well to mark such natural ​divisions by the use of numbered Sections with marginal headings. The titles proposed by Motowori in the Prolegomena to his Commentaries have been adopted with scarcely any alteration in the case of Vol. I. In Vols. II and III, where his sections mostly embrace the whole reign of an emperor, and the titles given by him to each Section consists only of the name of the palace where each emperor is said to have resided, there is less advantage in following him; for those Sections are often inordinately long, and their titles occasionally misleading and always inconvenient for purposes of reference, as the Japanese emperors are commonly known, not by the names of their places of residence, but by their “canonical names.” Motowori, as an ardent nationalist, of course rejected these “canonical names,” because they were first applied to the Japanese emperors at a comparatively late date in imitation of Chinese usage. But to a foreigner this need be no sufficient reason for discarding them. The Sections in the translation of Vols. II and III have therefore been obtained by breaking up the longer reigns into appropriate portions; and in such Sections, as also in the Foot-notes, the emperors are always mentioned by their “canonical names.” The Vol. mentioned in brackets on every right-hand page is that of Motowori’s Commentary which treats of the Section contained in that page.
The Notes translated from the original are indented, and are printed small when they are in small type in the Japanese text. Those only which give directions for pronouncing certain characters phonetically have been omitted, as they have no significance when the original tongue and method of writing are exchanged for foreign vehicles of thought and expression. The Songs have likewise been indented for the sake of clearness, and each one printed as a separate paragraph. The occasionally unavoidable insertion in the translation of important words not occurring in the Japanese text has been indicated by printing such words ​within square brackets. The translator’s Notes, which figure at the bottom of each page, do not aim at anything more than the exegesis of the actual text. To illustrate its subject-matter from other sources, as Motowori does, and to enlarge on all the subjects connected with Japanese antiquity which are sometines merely alluded to in a single phrase, would require several more volumes the size of this one, many years of labour on the part of the investigator, and an unusually large stock of patience on the reader’s part. The Notes terminate with the death of the Emperor Ken-zō, after which the text ceases to offer any interest, except as a comment on the genealogies given in the “Chronicles of Japan.”
Without forgetting the fact that so-called equivalent terms in two languages rarely quite cover each other, and that it may therefore be necessary in some cases to render one Japanese word by two or three different English words according to the context, the translator has striven to keep such diversity within the narrowest limits, as it tends to give a false impression of the original, implying that it possesses a versatility of thought which is indeed characteristic of Modern Europe, but not at all of Early Japan. With reference to this point a certain class of words must be mentioned, as the English translation is unavoidably defective in their case, owing to the fact of our language not possessing sufficiently close synonyms for them. They are chiefly the names of titles, and are the following:—
| Agata-no-atuhe | roughly rendered by | Departmental Suzerain. |
| Agata-nushi | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Departmental Lord. |
| Asomi (Asoñ) | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Court Noble. |
| Atahe | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Suzerain. |
| Hiko | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Prince. |
| Hime | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Princess. |
| Inaki | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Territorial Lord. |
| Iratsuko | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Lord. |
| Iratsume | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Lady. |
| Kami | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Deity. |
| Kimi | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Duke. |
| Ma | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | True. |
| Miko (王) | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | King. ​ |
| Mi ko (御子) | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | August Child. |
| Mikoto | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Augustness. |
| Miyatsuko | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Ruler. |
| Murazhi | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Chief. |
| Omi | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Grandee. |
| Sukune | roughly„ rendered„ by„ | Noble. |
| Wake (in the names of human beings) | Wake (in the names of human beings) | Lord. |
It must be understood that no special significance is to be attached to the use of such words as “Duke,” “Suzerain,” etc. They are merely, so to speak, labels by which titles that are distinct in the original are sought to be kept distinct in the translation. Many of them also are used as that species of hereditary titular designation which the translator has ventured to call the “gentile name.” Where possible, indeed, the etymological meaning of the Japanese word has been preserved. Thus omi seems to be rightly derived by Motowori from oho-mi, “great body”; and “grandee” is therefore the nearest English equivalent. Similarly murazhi, “chief,” is a corruption of two words signifying “master of a tribe.” On the other hand, both the etymology and the precise import of the title of wake are extremely doubtful. Hiko and hime again, if they really come from hi ko, “sun-child” and hi me, “sun-female” (or “fire-child” and “fire-female”), have wandered so far from their origin as, even in Archaic times, to have been nothing more than Honorific appellations, corresponding in a loose fashion to the English words “prince and princess,” or “lord and lady,”—in some cases perhaps meaning scarcely more than “youth and maiden.”
The four words kami, ma, miko and mikoto alone call for special notice; and ma may be disposed of first. It is of uncertain origin, but identified by the native philologists with the perpetually recurring honorific mi, rendered “august.” As, when written ideographically, it is always represented by the Chinese character 眞, the translator renders it in English by “true”; but it must be understood that this word has no force beyond that of an Honorific.
Mikoto, rendered “Augustness,” is properly a compound, mi koto, ​“august thing.” It is used as a title, somewhat after the fashion of our words “Majesty” and “Highness,” being suffixed to the names of exalted human personages, and also of gods and goddesses. For the sake of clearness in the English translation this title is prefixed and used with the possessive pronoun, thus: Yamato-Take-no-Mikoto, His Augustness Yamato-Take.
With regard to the title read miko by the native commentators, it is represented in two ways in the Chinese text. When a young prince is denoted by it, we find the characters 御子, “august child,” reminding us of the Spanish title of infante. But in other cases it is written with the single character 王, “King,” and it may be questioned whether the reading of it as miko is not arbitrary. Many indications lead us to suppose that in Early Japan something similar to the feudal system, which again obtained during the Middle Ages, was in force; and if so, then some of these “kings,” may have been kings indeed after a fashion; and to degrade their title, as do the modern commentators, to that of “prince” is an anachronism. In any case the safest plan, if we would not help to obscure this interesting political question, is to adhere to the proper signification of the character in the text, and that character is 王, “King.”
Of all the words for which it is hard to find a suitable English equivalent, Kami is the hardest. Indeed there is no English word which renders it with any near approach to exactness. If therefore it is here rendered by the word “deity” (“deity” being preferred to “god” because it includes superior beings of both sexes), it must be clearly understood that the word “deity” is taken in a sense not sanctioned by any English dictionary; for kami, and “deity” or “god,” only correspond to each other in a very rough manner. The proper meaning of the word “kami” is “top,” or “above”; and it is still constantly so used. For this reason it has the secondary sense of “hair of the head;” and only the hair on the top of the head,—not the hair on the face,—is so designated. Similarly the Government, in popular phraseology, is O Kami, literally “the honorably above”; and down to a few years ago Kami was the name of a certain titular ​provincial rank. Thus it may be understood how the word was naturally applied to superiors in general, and especially to those more than human superiors whom we call “gods.” A Japanese, to whom the origin of the word is patent, and who uses it every day in contexts by no means divine, does not receive from the word Kami the same impression of awe which is produced on the more earnest European mind by the words “deity” and “god,” with their very different associations. In using the word “deity,” therefore, to translate the Japanese term Kami we must, so to speak, bring it down from the heights to which Western thought has raised it. In fact Kami does not mean much more than “superior.” This subject will be noticed again in Section V of the present Introduction; but so far as the word Kami itself is concerned, these remarks may suffice.
To conclude this Section, the translator must advert to his treatment of Proper Names, and he feels that he must plead guilty to a certain amount of inconsistency on this head. Indeed the treatment of Proper Names is always an embarrassment, partly because it is often difficult to determine what is a Proper Name, and partly because in translating a text into a foreign tongue Proper Names, whose meanings are evident in the original and perhaps have a bearing on the story, lose their significance; and the translator has therefore first of all to decide whether the name is really a Proper Name at all or simply a description of the personage or place, and next whether he will sacrifice the meaning because the word is used as a name, or preserve the original name and thus fail to render the meaning,—a meaning which may be of importance as revealing the channels in which ancient thought flowed. For instance Oho-kuni-nushi-no-kami, “the Deity Master of the Great Land,” is clearly nothing more than a description of the god in question, who had several other names, and the reason of whoso adoption of this special one was that the sovereignty of the “Great Land,” i.e. of Japan (or rather of Idzumo and the neighbouring provinces in north-western Japan), was ceded to him by another god, whom he deceived and whose daughter he ran away with. Again Toyo-ashi-hara-no-chi-aki-no-naga-i-ho-aki-no-midzu-ho-no-kuni, which signifies “the Luxuriant ​Reed-Moors, the Land of Fresh Rice-ears,—of a Thousand Autumns,—of Long Five Hundred Autumns” cannot possibly be regarded as more than an honorific description of Japan. Such a catalogue of words could never have been used as a name. On the other hand it is plain that Tema was simply the proper name of a certain mountain, because there is no known word in Archaic Japanese to which it can with certainty be traced. The difficulty is with the intermediate cases,—the cases of those names which are but partly comprehensible or partly applicable to their bearers; and the difficulty is one of which there would seem to be no satisfactory solution possible. The translator may therefore merely state that in Vol. I of these “Records,” where an unusual number of the Proper Names have a bearing on the legends related in the text, he has, wherever feasible, translated all those which are borne by persons, whether human or divine. In the succeeding Volumes he has not done so, nor has he, except in a very small number of instances, translated the Proper Names of places in any of the three volumes. In order, however, to convey all the needful information both as to sound and as to sense, the Japanese original is always indicated in a Foot-note when the translation has the name in English, and vice versâ, while all doubtful etymologies are discussed.
III. The “Chronicles of Japan.”
It will have been gathered from what has been already said, and it is indeed generally known, that the “Records of Ancient Matters” do not stand alone. To say nothing of the “Chronicles of Old Matters of Former Ages,” whose genuineness is disputed, there is another undoubtedly authentic work with which no student of Japanese antiquity can dispense. It is entitled “Nihon-Gi,” i.e., “Chronicles of Japan,” and is second only in value to the “Records,” which it has always excelled in popular favour. It was completed in A.D. 720, eight years after the “Records of Ancient Matters” had been presented to the Empress Gem-miyō.
The scope of the two histories is the same; but the language of the later one and its manner of treating the national traditions stand in notable contrast to the unpretending simplicity of the elder work. Not ​only is the style (excepting in the Songs, which had to be left as they were or sacrificed altogether) completely Chinese,—in fact to a great extent a cento of well-worn Chinese phrases,—but the subject-matter is touched up, re-arranged, and polished, so as to make the work resemble a Chinese history so far as that was possible. Chinese philosophical speculations and moral precepts are intermingled with the cruder traditions that had descended from Japanese antiquity. Thus the naturalistic Japanese account of the creation is ushered in by a few sentences which trace the origin of all things to Yin and Yang (陰陽), the Passive and Active Essences of Chinese philosophy. The legendary Emperor Jim-mu is credited with speeches made up of quotations from the “Yi Ching,” the “Li Chi,” and other standard Chinese works. A few of the most childish of the national traditions are omitted, for instance the story of the “White Hare of Inaba,” that of the gods obtaining counsel of a toad, and that of the hospitality which a speaking mouse extended to the deity Master-of-the Great-Land. Sometimes the original tradition is simply softened down or explained away. A notable instance of this occurs in the account of the visit of the deity Izanagi to Hades, whither he goes in quest of his dead wife, and among other things has to scale the “Even Pass (or Hill) of Hades.” In the tradition preserved in the “Records”" and indeed even in the “Chronicles,” this pass or hill is mentioned as a literal geographical fact. But the compiler of the latter work, whose object it was to appear and to make his forefathers appear, as reasonable as a learned Chinese, adds a gloss to the effect that “One account says that the Even Hill of Hades is no distinct place, but simply the moment when breathing ceases at the time of death”;—not a happy guess certainly, for this pass is mentioned in connection with Izanagi’s return to the land of the living. In short we may say of this work what was said of the Septuagint,—that it rationalizes.
Perhaps it will be asked, how can it have come to pass that a book ​in which the national traditions are thus unmistakably tampered with, and which is moreover written in Chinese instead of in the native tongue, has enjoyed such a much greater share of popularity than the more genuine work?
The answer lies on the surface: the concessions made to Chinese notions went far towards satisfying minds trained on Chinese models, while at the same time the reader had his respect for the old native emperors increased, and was enabled to preserve some sort of belief in the native gods. People are rarely quite logical in such matters, particularly in an early stage of society; and difficulties are glossed over rather than insisted upon. The beginning of the world, for instance, or, to use Japanese phraseology, the “separation of heaven and earth” took place a long time ago; and perhaps, although there could of course be no philosophical doubt as to the cause of this event having been the interaction of the Passive and Active Essences, it might also somehow be true that Izanngi and Izanami (the “Male-Who-Invites” and the “Female-Who-Invites”) were the progenitor and progenitrix of Japan. Who knows but what in them the formative principles may not have been embodied, represented, or figured forth after a fashion not quite determined, but none the less real? As a matter of fact, the two deities in question have often been spoken of in Japanese books under such designations as the “Yin Deity” and the “Yang Deity,” and in his Chinese Preface the very compiler of these “Records” lends his sanction to the use of such phraseology, though, if we look closely at the part taken by the goddess in the legend narrated in Sect. IV, it would seem but imperfectly applicable. If again early sovereigns, such as the Empress Jin-gō, address their troops in sentences cribbed from the “Shu Ching,” or, like the Emperor Kei-kō, describe the Ainos in terms that would only suit the pages of a Chinese topographer,—both these personages being supposed to have lived prior to the opening up of intercourse with the continent of Asia,—the anachronism was partly hidden by the fact of the work which thus recorded their doings being itself written in the Chinese language, where such phrases only sounded natural. In some instances, too, the Chinese usage had so completely ​superseded the native one as to cause the latter to have been almost forgotten excepting by the members of the Shintō priesthood. This happened in the case of the Chinese method of divination by means of a tortoise-shell, whose introduction caused the elder native custom of divination through the shoulder-blade of a deer to fall into desuetude. Whether indeed this native custom itself may not perhaps be traced back to still earlier continental influence is another question. So far as any documentary information reaches, divination through the shoulder-blade of a deer was the most ancient Japanese method of ascertaining the will of the gods. The use of the Chinese sexagenary cycle for counting years, months, and days is another instance of the imported usage having become so thoroughly incorporated with native habits of mind as to make the anachronism of employing it when speaking of a period confessedly anterior to the introduction of continental civilization pass unnoticed. As for the (to a modern European) grotesque notion of pretending to give the precise months and days of events supposed to have occurred a thousand years before the date assigned to the introduction of astronomical instruments, of observatories, and even of the art of writing, that is another of those inconsistencies which, while lying on the very surface, yet so easily escape the uncritical Oriental mind. Semi-civilized people tire of asking questions, and to question antiquity, which fills so great a place in their thoughts, is the last thing that would occur to any of their learned men, whose mental attitude is characteristically represented by Confucius when he calls himself “A transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients.” As regards the question of language, standard Chinese soon became easier to understand than Archaic Japanese, as the former alone was taught in the schools, and the native ​language changed rapidly during the century or two that followed the diffusion of the foreign tongue and civilization. We have only to call to mind the relative facility to most of ourselves of a Latin book and of one written in Early English. Of course, as soon as the principles of the Japanese Renaissance had taken hold of men’s minds in the eighteenth century, the more genuine, more national work assumed its proper place in the estimation of students. But the uncouthness of the style according to modern ideas, and the greater amount of explanation of all sorts that is required in order to make the “Records of Ancient Matters” intelligible, must always prevent them from attaining to the popularity of the sister history. Thus, though published almost simultaneously, the tendencies of the two works were very different, and their fate has differed accordingly.
To the European student the chief value of the “Chronicles of Japan” lies in the fact that their author, in treating of the so-called “Divine Age,” often gives a number of various forms of the same legend, under the heading of “One account says,” suffixed in the form of a note to the main text. No phrase is more commonly met with in later treatises on Japanese history than this,—“One account in the ‘Chronicles of Japan’ says,” and it will be met with occasionally in the Foot-notes to the present translation. There are likewise instances of the author of the “Chronicles” having preserved, either in the text or in “One account,” traditions omitted by the compiler of the “Records.” Such are, for instance, the quaint legend invented to explain the fact that the sun and moon do not shine simultaneously, and the curious ​development of the legend of the expulsion of the deity Susa-no-wo (“Impetuous Male”), telling us of the hospitality which was refused to him by the other gods when he appeared before them to beg for shelter. Many of the Songs, too, in the “Chronicles” are different from those in the “Records,” and make a precious addition to our vocabulary of Archaic Japanese. The prose text, likewise, contains in the shape of notes, numbers of readings by which the pronunciation of words written ideographically, or the meaning of words written phonetically in the “Records” may be ascertained. Finally the “Chronicles” give us the annals of seventy-two years not comprised in the plan of the “Records,” by carrying down to A.D. 700 the history which in the “Records” stops at the year 628. Although therefore it is a mistake to assert, as some have done, that the “Chronicles of Japan” must be placed at the head of all the Japanese historical works, their assistance can in no wise be dispensed with by the student of Japanese mythology and of the Japanese language.
IV. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EARLY JAPANESE.
The Japanese of the mythical period, as pictured in the legends preserved by the compiler of the “Records of Ancient Matters,” were a race who had long emerged from the savage state, and had attained to a high level of barbaric skill. The Stone Age was forgotten by them—or nearly so,—and the evidence points to their never having passed through a genuine Bronze Age, though the knowledge of bronze was at a later period introduced from the neighbouring continent. ​They used iron for manufacturing spears, swords, and knives of various shapes, and likewise for the more peaceful purpose of making hooks wherewith to angle, or to fasten the doors of their huts. Their other warlike and hunting implements (besides traps and gins, which appear to have been used equally for catching beasts and birds and for destroying human enemies) were bows and arrows, spears and elbow-pads,—the latter seemingly of skin, while special allusion is made to the fact that the arrows were feathered. Perhaps clubs should be added to the list. Of the bows and arrows, swords and knives, there is perpetual mention; but nowhere do we hear of the tools with which they were manufactured, and there is the same remarkable silence regarding such widely spread domestic implements as the saw and the axe. We hear, however, of the pestle and mortar, of the fire-drill, of the wedge, of the sickle, and of the shuttle used in weaving.
Navigation seems to have been in a very elementary stage. Indeed the art of sailing was, as we know from the classical literature of the country, but little practised in Japan even so late as the middle of the tenth century of our era subsequent to the general diffusion of Chinese civilization, though rowing and punting are often mentioned by the early poets. In one passage of the “Records” and in another of the “Chronicles,” mention is made of a “two-forked boat” used on inland pools or lakes; but, as a rule, in the earlier portions of those works, we read only of people going to sea or being sent down from heaven in water-proof baskets without oars, and reaching their destination not through any efforts of their own, but through supernatural interposition.
To what we should call towns or villages very little reference is ​made anywhere in the “Records” or in that portion of the “Chronicles” which contains the account of the so-called “Divine Age.” But from what we learn incidentally, it would seem that the scanty population was chiefly distributed in small hamlets and isolated dwellings along the coast and up the course of the larger streams. Of house-building there is frequent mention,—especially of the building of palaces or temples for sovereigns or gods,—the words “palace” and “temple” being (it should be mentioned) represented in Japanese by the same term. Sometimes, in describing the construction of such a sacred dwelling, the author of the “Records,” abandoning his usual flat and monotonous style, soars away on poetic wings, as when, for instance, he tells how the monarch of Idzumo, on abdicating in favour of the Sun-Goddess’s descendant, covenanted that the latter should “make stout his temple pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom, and make high the cross-beams to the plain of High Heaven.” It must not, however, be inferred from such language that these so-called palaces and temples were of very gorgeous and imposing aspect. The more exact notices to be culled from the ancient Shintō Rituals (which are but little posterior to the “Records” and in no wise contradict the inferences to be drawn from the latter) having been already summarized by Mr. Satow, it may be as well to quote that gentleman’s words. He says: “The palace of the Japanese sovereign was a wooden hut, with its pillars planted in the ground, instead of being erected upon broad flat stones as in modern buildings. The whole frame-work, consisting of posts, beams, rafters, door-posts and window-frames, was tied together with cords made by twisting the long fibrous stems of climbing plants, such as Pueraria Thunbergiana (kuzu) and Wistaria Sinensis (fuji). The floor must have been low down, so that the occupants of the building, as they squatted or lay on their mats, were exposed to the stealthy attacks of venomous snakes, which were probably far more numerous in the earliest ages when the country was for the most part uncultivated, than at the present day. . . . . There seems some reason to think that the yuka, here translated floor, was originally nothing but a couch which ran round the sides of the hut, the rest ​of the space being simply a mud-floor, and that the size of the couch was gradually increased until it occupied the whole interior. The rafters projected upward beyond the ridge-pole, crossing each other as is seen in the roofs of modern Shiñ-tau temples, whether their architecture be in conformity with early traditions (in which case all the rafters are so crossed) or modified in accordance with more advanced principles of construction, and the crossed rafters retained only as ornaments at the two ends of the ridge. The roof was thatched, and perhaps had a gable at each end, with a hole to allow the smoke of the wood-fire to escape, so that it was possible for birds flying in and perching on the beams overhead, to defile the food, or the fire with which it was cooked.” To this description it need only be added that fences were in use, and that the wooden doors, sometimes fastened by means of hooks, resembled those with which we are familiar in Europe rather than the sliding, screen-like doors of modern Japan. The windows seem to have been mere holes. Rugs of skins and rush matting were occasionally brought in to sit upon, and we even hear once or twice of “silk rugs” being used for the same purpose by the noble and wealthy.
The habits of personal cleanliness which so pleasantly distinguish the modern Japanese from their neighbours in continental Asia, though less fully developed than at present, would seem to have existed in the germ in early times, as we read more than once of bathing in rivers, and are told of bathing-women being specially attached to the person of a certain imperial infant. Lustrations, too, formed part of the religious practices of the race. Latrines are mentioned several times. They would appear to have been situated away from the houses and to have generally been placed over a running stream, whence doubtless the name for latrine in the Archaic Dialect,—kaha-ya, i. e. “river-house.” A well-known Japanese classic of the tenth century, the “Yamato Tales,” tells us indeed that “in older days the people dwelt in houses raised on platforms built out on the river Ikuta,” and goes on to relate a story which presupposes such a method of architecture. A passage in the account ​of the reign of the Emperor Jim-mu which occurs both in the “Records” and in the “Chronicles,” and another in the reign of the Emperor Sui-nin occurring in the “Records” only, might be interpreted so as to support this statement. But both are extremely obscure, and beyond the fact that people who habitually lived near the water may have built their houses after the aquatic fashion practised in different parts of the world by certain savage tribes both ancient and modern, the present writer is not aware of any authority for the assertion that they actually did so except the isolated passage in the “Yamato Tales” just quoted.
A peculiar sort of dwelling-place which the two old histories bring prominently under our notice, is the so-called “parturition-house,”—a one-roomed hut without windows which a woman was expected to build and retire into for the purpose of being delivered unseen. It would also appear to be not unlikely that newly-married couples retired into a ​specially built hut for the purpose of consummating the marriage, and it is certain that for each sovereign a new palace was erected on his accession.
Castles are not distinctly spoken of till a period which, though still mythical in the opinion of the present writer, coincides according to the received chronology with the first century B. C. We then first meet with the curious term “rice-castle,” whose precise signification is a matter of dispute among the native commentators, but which, on comparison with Chinese descriptions of the Early Japanese, should probably be understood to mean a kind of palisade serving the purpose of a redoubt, behind which the warriors could ensconce themselves. If this conjecture be correct, we have bore a good instance of a word, so to speak, moving upward with the march of civilization, the term, which formerly denoted something not much better than a fence, having later come to convey the idea of a stone castle.
To conclude the subject of dwelling-places, it should be stated that cave-dwellers are sometimes alluded to. The legend of the retirement of the Sun-Goddess into a cavern may possibly suggest to some the idea of an early period when such habitations were the normal abodes of the ancestors of the Japanese race. But at the time when the national traditions assumed their present shape, such a state of things had certainly quite passed away, if it ever existed, and only barbarous Ainos and rough bands of robbers are credited with the construction of such primitive retreats. Natural caves (it may be well to state) are rare in Japan, and the caves that are alluded to were mostly artificial, as may be gathered from the context.
The food of the Early Japanese consisted of fish and of the flesh of the wild creatures which fell by the hunter’s arrow or were taken in the trapper’s snare,—an animal diet with which Buddhist prohibitions had not yet interfered, as they began to do in early historical times. Rice is the only cereal of which there is such mention made as to place it beyond a doubt that its cultivation dates back to time immemorial. ​Beans, millet, and barley are indeed named once, together with silk-worms, in the account of the “Divine Age.” But the passage has every aspect of an interpolation in the legend, perhaps not dating back long before the time of the eighth century compiler. A few unimportant vegetables and fruits, of most of which there is but a single mention, will be found in the list of plants given below. The intoxicating liquor called sake was known in Japan during the mythical period, and so were chopsticks for eating the food with. Cooking-pots and cups and dishes—the latter both of earthenware and of leaves of trees,—are also mentioned; but of the use of fire for warming purposes we hear nothing. Tables are named several times, but never in connection with food. They would seem to have been exclusively used for the purpose of presenting offerings on, and were probably quite small and low,—in fact rather trays than tables according to European ideas.
In the use of clothing and the specialization of garments the Early Japanese had reached a high level. We read in the most ancient legends of upper garments, skirts, trowsers, girdles, veils, and hats, while both sexes adorned themselves with necklaces, bracelets, and head-ornaments of stones considered precious,—in this respect offering a striking contrast to their descendants in modern times, of whose attire jewelry forms no part. The material of their clothes was hempen cloth and paper-mulberry bark, coloured by being rubbed with madder, and probably with woad and other tinctorial plants. All the garments, so far as we may judge, were woven, sewing being nowhere mentioned, and it being expressly stated by the Chinese commentator on the “Shan Hai Ching,” who wrote early in the fourth century, that the Japanese had no needles. From the great place which the chase occupied in daily life we are led to suppose that skins also were used to make garments of. There is in the “Records” at least one passage which favours this supposition, and the “Chronicles” in one place mention the straw rain-coat and broad-brimmed ​hat, which still form the Japanese peasant’s effectual protection against the inclemencies of the weather. The tendrils of creeping plants served the purposes of string, and bound the warrior’s sword round his waist. Combs are mentioned, and it is evident that much attention was devoted to the dressing of the hair. The men seem to have bound up their hair in two bunches, one on each side of the head, whilst the young boys tied theirs into a topknot, the unmarried girls let their locks hang down over their necks, and the married women dressed theirs after a fashion which apparently combined the two last-named methods. There is no mention in any of the old books of cutting the hair or beard except in token of disgrace; neither do we gather that the sexes, but for this matter of the head-dress, were distinguished by a diversity of apparel and ornamentation.
With regard to the precious stones mentioned above as having been used as ornaments for the head, neck, and arms, the texts themselves give us little or no information as to the identity of the stones meant to be referred to. Indeed it is plain (and the native commentators admit the fact) that a variety of Chinese characters properly denoting different sorts of jewels were used indiscriminately by the early Japanese writers to represent the single native word tama, which is the only one the language contains to denote any hard substance on which a special value is set, and which often refers chiefly to the rounded shape, so that it might in fact be translated by the word “bead” as fittingly as by the word “jewel.” We know, however, from the specimens which have rewarded the labours of archæological research in Japan that agate, crystal, glass, jade, serpentine, and steatite are the most usual materials, and carved and pierced cylindrical shapes (maga-tama and kuda-tama), the commonest forms.
The horse (which was ridden, but not driven), the barndoor fowl, and the cormorant used for fishing, are the only domesticated creatures mentioned in the earlier traditions, with the doubtful exception of the ​silkworm, to winch reference has already been made. In the later portions of the “Records” and “Chronicles”, dogs and cattle are alluded to; but sheep, swine, and even cats were apparently not yet introduced. Indeed sheep were scarcely to be seen in Japan until a few years ago, goats are still almost unknown, and swine and all poultry excepting the barn-door fowl are extremely uncommon.
The following enumeration of the animals and plants mentioned in the earlier portion of the “Records” may be of interest. The Japanese equivalents, some few of which are obsolete, are put in parenthesis, together with the Chinese characters used to write them:
Mammals.
* Bear, (kuma 熊).
* Boar, (wi 猪).
* Deer, (shika 鹿.)
* Hare, (usagi 兎.)
* Horse, (uma 馬 and koma 駒).
* Mouse or Rat, (nedzumi 鼠).
* “Sea-ass” [Seal or Sea-lion?] (michi 海驢).
* Whale, (kujira 鯨).
Birds.
* Barndoor-fowl, (kake 鷄).
* Cormorant, (u 鵜).
* Crow or Raven, (karasu 烏).
* Dotterel or Plover or Sand-piper, (chi-dori 千鳥).
* Heron or Egret (sagi 鷺).
* Kingfisher (soni-dori 翠鳥).
* Nuye, (鵺).
* Pheasant (kigishi 雉).
* Snipe, (shigi 鴫).
* Swan, (shiro-tori 白鳥).
* Wild-duck, (kamo 鴨).
* Wild-goose, (kari 鴈).
Reptiles.
* Crocodile, (wani 鰐).
* Tortoise (kame 龜).
* Toad or Frog, (taniguku, written phonetically).
* Serpent, (worochi 蛇).
* Snake [smaller than the preceding], (hemi 蛇).
Insects.
* Centipede, (mukade 蜈蚣).
* Dragon-fly, (akidzu 蜻蛉).
* Fly, (hahi 蠅).
* Louse, (shirami 虱).
* Silk-worm, (kahiko 蠶).
* Wasp or Bee, (hachi 蜂).
Fishes, etc.
* Pagrus cardinalis [probably], (aka-daki 赤鯛) [or perhaps the Pagrus cardinalis (tai 鯛) is intended].
* Perch [Percalabrax japonicus] (sudzuki 鱸).
* Bèche-de-mer [genus Pentacta] (ko 海鼠).
* Medusa, (kurage, written phonetically).
Shells.
* Arca Suberenata [?] (hirabu-kahi, written phonetically).
* Cockle [Arca Inflata] (kisa-gahi 螯貝).
* Turbinidæ [a shell of the family] (shita-dami 細螺).
Plants.
* Ampelopsis serianæfolia [?] (kagami 羅摩).
* Aphananthe aspera, (muku, written phonetically).
* Aucuba japonica [probably], (aha-gi, written phonetically).
* Bamboo, (take 竹).
* Bamboo-grass [Bambusa chino], (sasa 小竹).
* Barley [or wheat?], (mugi 麥).
* Beans [two kinds, viz., Soja glycine and Phaseolus radiatus (the general name is mame 豆, that of the latter species in particular adzuki, 小豆).
* Bulrush [Typha japonica] (kama 蒲黃).
* Bush-clover [Lespedeza of various species], (hagi 萩).
* Camellia japonica (tsuba-ki 椿).
* Cassia [Chinese mythical; or perhaps the native Cercidiphyllum japonica], (katsura, variously written).
* Chamæcyparis obtsusa, (hi-no-ki 檜).
* Cleyera japonica [and another allied but undetermined species], (saka-ki 榊).
* Clubmoss, (hi-kage 日景). ​
* Cocculus thunbergi [probably] (tsudzura 黑葛.)
* Cryptomeria japonica, (sugi 榲).
* Eulalia japonica (kaya 葺草).
* Evonymus japonica, (masa-ki 眞賢木).
* Ginger, [or perhaps the Xanthoxylon is intended] (hazhikami 薑).
* Halochloa macrantha [but it is not certain that this is the sea-weed intended] (komo 海専).
* Holly [or rather the Olea aquifolium, which closely resembles holly], hihi-ra-gi 柊).
* Knot-grass [Polygonum tinctorium] (awi 藍).
* Lily, (sawi written phonetically, yama-yuri-gusa 山由理草, and saki-kusa 三枝草).
* Madder, (akane 茜).
* Millet [Panicum italicum], (aha 粟).
* Moss, (koke 蘿).
* Oak (two species, one evergreen and one deciduous,—Quercus myrsinæfolia, Q. dentata (kashi 白檮, kashiwa 柏)].
* Peach, (momo 桃).
* Photinia glabra [?], (soba, written phonetically).
* Pine-tree, (matsu 松).
* Pueraria thunbergiana, (kudzu 葛).
* Reed, (ashi 葦).
* Rice, (ine 稻).
* Sea-weed [or the original term may designate a particular species], (me 海布).
* Sedge [Scirpus maritimus], (suge 菅).
* Spindle-tree [Evonymus radicans], (masaki no kadura 眞柝鬘).
* Vegetable Wax-tree [Rhus succedanea], (hazhi) 櫨).
* Vine, (yebi-kadzura 萄蒲).
* Wild cherry [or birch?], (hahaka 朱櫻).
* Wild chive [or rather the allium odorum, which closely resembles it], (ka-mira 臭韮).
* Winter-cherry [Physalis alkekengi] (aka-kaguchi written phonetically, and also hohodzuki 酸醤).
The later portions of the work furnish in addition the following:—
Animals.
* Cow (ushi 牛).
* Dog, (inu 犬).
* Crane, [genus Grus] (tadzu 鶴).
* Dove or Piegon, (hato 鳩).
* Grebe, (niho-dori 鸊鷉).
* Lark, (hibari 雲雀).
* Peregrine falcon, (hayabusa 隼).
* Red-throated quail, (udzura 鶉).
* Tree-sparrow (suzume 雀).
* Wag-tail, [probably] (mana-bashira, written phonetically).
* Wren, (sazaki 鷦鷯).
* Dolphin, (iruka 入鹿魚).
* Trout, [Plecoglossus altivelis] (ayu 年魚).
* Tunny, [a kind of, viz. Thynnus sibi] (shibi 鮪).
* Crab, (kani 蟹).
* Horse-fly (amu 虻).
* Oyster (kaki 蠣).
Plants.
* Alder [Alnus maritima] (hari-no-ki 榛).
* Aralia (mi-tsuna-gashiha 御綱柏).
* Brasenia peltata (nunaha 蓴).
* Cabbage [brassica] (awona 菘菜).
* Catalpa Kaempferi [but some say the cherry is meant] (adzusa 梓).
* Chestnut (kuri 栗).
* Dioscorea quinqueloba (tokoro-dzura 解葛). ​
* Evonymus sieboldianus (mayumi 木檀).
* Gourd (hisago 瓢).
* Hedysarum esculentum (wogi 荻).
* Hydropyrum latifolium (komo 菰).
* Kadzura japonica (sana-kadzura 蘰).
* Livistona sinensis (ajimasa 檳榔).
* Lotus [nelumbium] (hachisu 蓮).
* Musk-melon (hozochi 熟瓜).
* Oak, [three species, Quercus serrata (kunugi 歷木) and Q. glandulifera (nara 楢), both deciduous; Q. gilva (ichihi 赤檮) [evergreen].
* Orange (tachibana 橘).
* Podocarpus macrophylla (maki 檜).
* Radish, [Raphanus sativus] (oho-ne 大根).
* Sashibu (written phonetically) [not identified].
* Water caltrop, [Trapa bispinosa] (hishi 菱).
* Wild garlic [Allium nipponicum] (nu-biru 野赫).
* Zelkowa keaki [probably] (tsuki 槻).
A few more are probably preserved in the names of places. Thus in Shinano, the name of a province, we seem to have the shina (Tilia cordata), and in Tadetsu the tade (Polygonum japonicum). But the identification in these cases is mostly uncertain. It must also be remembered that, as in the case of all non-scientific nomenclatures, several species, and occasionally even more than one genus, are included in a single Japanese term. Thus chi-dori (here always rendered “dotterel”) is the name of any kind of sand-piper, plover or dotterel. Kari is a general name applied to geese, but not to all the species, and also to the great bustard. Again it should not be forgotten that there may have been, and probably were, in the application of some of these terms, differences of usage between the present day and eleven or twelve centuries ago. Absolute precision is therefore not attainable.
Noticeable in the above lists is the abundant mention of plant-names in a work which is in no ways occupied with botany. Equally noticeable is the absence of some of those which are most common at the present day, such as the tea-plant and the plum-tree, while of the orange we are specially informed that it was introduced from abroad. The difference between the various stones and metals seems, on the other hand, to ​have attracted very little attention from the Early Japanese. In later times the chief metals were named mostly according to their colour, as follows:
| Yellow | metal | (gold). |
| White | metal„ | (silver). |
| Red | metal„ | (copper). |
| Black | metal„ | (iron). |
| Chinese (or Korean) | Chinese (or Korean) | (bronze). |
But in the “Records” the only metal of which it is implied that it was in use from time immemorial is iron, while “various treasures dazzling to the eye, from gold and silver downwards,” are only referred to once as existing in the far-western land of Korea. Red clay is the sole kind of earth specially named.
The words relative to colour which occur are:—
* Black.
* Blue (including Green).
* Red.
* Piebald (of horses).
* White.
Yellow is not mentioned (except in the foreign Chinese phrase “the Yellow Stream,” signifying Hades, and not to be counted in this context), neither are any of the numerous terms which in Modern Japanese serve to distinguish delicate shades of colour. We hear of the “blue (or green), i.e. black) clouds” and also of the “blue (or green), sea”; but the “blue sky” is conspicuous by its absence here as in so many other early literatures, though strangely enough it does occur in the oldest written monuments of the Chinese.
With regard to the subject of names for the different degrees of relationship,—a subject of sufficient interest to the student of sociology to warrant its being discussed at some length,—it may be stated that in modern Japanese parlance the categories according to which relationship is conceived of do not materially differ from those that are current in Europe. Thus we find father, grandfather, great-grandfather, uncle, ​nephew, stepfather, stepson, father-in-law, son-in-law, and the corresponding terms for females,—mother, grandmother etc.,—as well as such vaguer designations as parents, ancestors, cousins, and kinsmen. The only striking difference is that brothers and sisters, instead of being considered as all mutually related in the same manner, are divided into two categories, viz.:
| Ani | 兄 | elder brother(s), |
| Otouto | 弟 | younger brother(s), |
| Ane | 姉 | elder sister(s), |
| Imouto | 妹 | younger sister(s), |
in exact accordance with Chinese usage.
Now in Archaic times there seems to have been a different and more complicated system, somewhat resembling that which still obtains among the natives of Korea, and which the introduction of Chinese ideas and especially the use of the Chinese written characters must have caused to be afterwards abandoned. There are indications of it in some of the phonetically written fragments of the “Records.” But they are not of themselves sufficient to furnish a satisfactory explanation, and the subject has puzzled the native literati themselves. Moreover the English language fails us at this point, and elder and younger brother, elder and younger sister are the only terms at the translator's command. It may therefore be as well to quote in extenso Motowori's elucidation of the Archaic usage to be found in Vol. XIII, pp. 63-4 of his “Exposition of the Records of Ancient Matters.” He says : “Anciently, when brothers and sisters were spoken of, the elder brother was called se or ani in contradistinction to the younger brothers and younger sisters, and the younger brother also was called se in contradistinction to the elder sister. The elder sister was called ane in contradistinction to the younger sister, and the younger brother also would use the word ane in speaking of his elder sister himself. The younger brother was called oto in contradistinction to the elder brother, and the younger sister also was called oto in contradistinction to the elder sister. The younger sister was called imo in contradistinction to the elder brother, and the elder sister also was called imo in contradistinction to the ​younger brother. It was also the custom among brothers and sisters to use the words iro-se for se, iro-ne for ane, and iro-do for oto, and analogy forces us to conclude that iro-mo was used for imo.” (Motowori elsewhere explains iro as a term of endearment indentical with the word iro, “love ;” but we may hesitate to accept this view.) It will be observed that the foundation of this system of nomenclature was a subordination of the younger to the elder-born modified by a subordination of the females to the males. In the East, especially in primitive times, it is not “place aux dames,” but “place aux messieurs”.
Another important point to notice is that, though in a few passages of the “Records” we find a distinction drawn between the chief and the secondary wives,—perhaps nothing more than the favorite or better-born, and the less well-born, are meant to be thus designated,—yet not only is this distinction not drawn throughout, but the wife is constantly spoken of as imo, i.e. “younger sister.” In fact sister and wife were convertible terms and ideas ; and what in a later stage of Japanese, as of Western, civilization is abhorred as incest was in Archaic Japanese times the common practice. We also hear of marriages with half-sisters, with stepmothers, and with aunts ; and to wed two or three sisters at the same time was a recognized usage. Most such unions were naturally so contrary to Chinese ethical ideas, that one of the first traces of the influence of the latter in Japan was the stigmatizing of them as incest ; and the conflict between the old native custom and the imported moral code is seen to have resulted in political troubles. Marriage with sisters was naturally the first to disappear, and indeed it is only mentioned in the legends of the gods ; but unions with half-sisters, aunts, etc., lasted on into the historic epoch. Of exogamy, such as obtains in China, there is no trace in any Japanese document, nor do any other artificial impediments seem to have stood in the way of the free choice of the Early Japanese man, who also (in some cases at least) received a dowry with his bride or brides.
If, taking as our guides the incidental notices which are scattered ​up and down the pages of the earlier portion of the “Records” we endeavour to follow an Archaic Japanese through the chief events of his life from the cradle to the tomb, it will be necessary to begin by recalling what has already been alluded to as the “parturition-house” built by the mother, and in which, as we are specially told that it was made windowless, it would perhaps be contradictory to say that the infant first saw the light. Soon after birth a name was given to it,—given to it by the mother,—such name generally containing some appropriate personal reference. In the most ancient times each person (so far as we can judge) bore but one name, or rather one string of words compounded together into a sort of personal designation. But already at the dawn of the historical epoch we are met by the mention of surnames and of what, in the absence of a more fitting word, the translator has ventured to call “gentile names,” bestowed by the sovereign as a recompense for some noteworthy deed.
It may be gathered from our text that the idea of calling in the services of wet-nurses in certain exceptional cases had already suggested itself to the minds of the ruling class, whose infants were likewise sometimes attended by special bathing-women. To what we should call education, whether mental or physical, there is absolutely no reference made in the histories. All that can be inferred is that, when old enough to do so, the boys began to follow one of the callings of hunter or fisherman, while the girls staid at home weaving the garments of the family. There was also a great deal of fighting, generally of a treacherous kind, in the intervals of which the warriors occupied themselves in cultivating patches of ground. The very little which is to be gathered concerning the treatment of old people would seem to indicate that they were well cared for.
We are nowhere told of any wedding ceremonies except the giving of presents by the bride or her father, the probable reason being ​that no such ceremonies existed. Indeed late on into the Middle Ages cohabitation alone constituted matrimony,—cohabitation often secret at first, but afterwards acknowledged, when, instead of going round under cover of night to visit his mistress, the young man brought her back publicly to his parents’ house. Mistress, wife, and concubine were thus terms which were not distinguished, and the woman could naturally be discarded at any moment. She indeed was expected to remain faithful to the man with whom she had had more than a passing intimacy, but no reciprocal obligation bound him to her. Thus the wife of one of the gods is made to address her husband in a poem which says:
“Thou . . . . indeed, being a man, probably hast on the various island-headlands that thou seest, and on every beach-headland that thou lookest on, a wife like the young herbs. But I, alas! being a woman, have no man except thee; I have no spouse except thee,” etc., etc.
In this sombre picture the only graceful touch is the custom which lovers or spouses had of tying each other’s girdles when about to part for a time,—a ceremony by which they implied that they would be constant to each other during the period of absence. What became of the children in cases of conjugal separation does not clearly appear. In the only instance which is related at length, we find the child left with the father; but this instance is not a normal one. Adoption is not mentioned in the earliest traditions; so that when we meet with it later on we shall probably be justified in tracing its introduction to Chinese sources.
Of death-bed scenes and dying speeches we hear but little, and that little need not detain us. The burial rites are more important. The various ceremonies observed on such an occasion are indeed not explicitly detailed. But we gather thus much: that the hut tenanted by the deceased was abandoned,—an ancient custom to whose former existence the removal of the capital at the commencement of each new sovereign’s reign long continued to bear witness,—and that the body ​was first deposited for some days in a “mourning-house,” during which interval the survivors (though their tears and lamentations are also mentioned) held a carousal, feasting perhaps on the food which was specially prepared as an offering to the dead person. Afterwards, the corpse was interred, presumably in a wooden bier, as the introduction of stone tombs is specially noted by the historian as having taken place at the end of the reign of the Emperor Sui-nin, and was therefore believed by those who handed down the legendary history to have been a comparatively recent innovation, the date assigned to this monarch by the author of the “Chronicles” coinciding with the latter part of our first, and the first half of our second centuries. To a time not long anterior is attributed the abolition of a custom previously observed at the interments of royal personages. This custom was the burying alive of some of their retainers in the neighbourhood of the tomb. We know also, both from other early literary sources and from the finds which have recently rewarded the labours of archæologists, that articles of clothing, ornaments, etc., were buried with the corpse. It is all the more curious that the “Records” should nowhere make any reference to such a custom, and is a proof (if any be needed) of the necessity of not relying exclusively on any single authority, however respectable, if the full and true picture of Japanese antiquity is to be restored. A few details as to the abolition of the custom of burying retainers alive round their master’s tomb, and of the substitution for this cruel holocaust of images in clay will be found in Sect. LXIII, Note 23, and in Sect. LXXV, Note 4, of the following translation. If the custom be one which is properly included under the heading of human sacrifices, it is the only form of such sacrifices of which the earliest recorded Japanese social state retained any trace. The absence of slavery is another honourable feature. On the other hand, the most cruel punishments were dealt out to enemies and wrongdoers. Their nails were extracted, the sinews of their knees were cut, they were buried up to the neck so that their eyes burst, etc. Death, too, was inflicted ​for the most trivial offences. Of branding, or rather tattooing, the face as a punishment there are one or two incidental mentions. But as no tattooing or other marking or painting of the body for any other purpose is ever alluded to, with the solitary exception in one passage of the painting of her eyebrows by a woman, it is possible that the penal use of tattooing may have been borrowed from the Chinese, to whom it was not unknown.
The shocking obscenity of word and act to which the “Records” bear witness is another ugly feature which must not quite be passed over in silence. It is true that decency, as we understand it, is a very modern product, and is not to be looked for in any society in the barbarous stage. At the same time, the whole range of literature might perhaps be ransacked in vain for a parallel to the naïve filthiness of the passage forming Sect. IV. of the following translation, or to the extraordinary topic which the hero Yamato-Take and his mistress Miyazu are made to select as the theme of poetical repartee. One passage likewise would lead us to suppose that the most beastly crimes were commonly committed.
To conclude this portion of the subject, it may be useful for the sake of comparison to call attention to a few arts and products with which the early Japanese were not acquainted. Thus they had no tea, no fans, no porcelain, no lacquer,—none of the things, in fact, by which in later times they have been chiefly known. They did not yet use vehicles of any kind. They had no accurate method of computing time, no money, scarcely any knowledge of medicine. Neither, though they possessed some sort of music, and poems a few of which at least are not without merit, do we hear anything of the art of drawing. But the most important art of which they were ignorant is that of writing. As some ​misapprehension has existed on this head, and scholars in Europe have been misled by the inventions of zealous champions of the Shintō religion into a belief in the so-called “Divine Characters,” by them alleged to have been invented by the Japanese gods and to have been used by the Japanese people prior to the introduction of the Chinese ideographic writing, it must be stated precisely that all the traditions of the “Divine Age”, and of the reigns of the earlier Emperors down to the third century of our era according to the received chronology, maintain a complete silence on the subject of writing, writing materials, and records of every kind. Books are nowhere mentioned till a period confessedly posterior to the opening up of intercourse with the Asiatic continent, and the first books whose names occur are the “Lun Yü” and the “Ch’ien Tzŭ Wên,” which are said to have been brought over to Japan during the reign of the Emperor Ō-jin,—according to the same chronology in the year 284 after Christ. That even this statement is antedated, is shown by the fact that the “Ch’ien Tzŭ Wên” was not written till more than two centuries later,—a fact which is worthy the attention of those who have been disposed simply to take on trust the assertions of the Japanese historians. It should likewise be mentioned that, as has already been pointed out by Mr. Aston, the Japanese terms fumi “written document,” and fude “pen,” are probably corruptions of foreign words. The present, indeed, is not the place to discuss the ​whole question of the so-called “Divine Characters,” which Motowori, the most patriotic as well as the most learned of the Japanese literati, dismisses in a note to the Prolegomena of his “Exposition of the Records of Ancient Matters” with the remark that they “are a late forgery over which no words need be wasted.” But as this mare’s nest has been imported into the discussion of the Early Japanese social state, and as the point is one on which the absolute silence of the early traditions bears such clear testimony, it was impossible to pass it by without some brief allusion.
V.
RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL IDEAS OF THE EARLY JAPANESE, BEGINNINGS OF THE JAPANESE NATION, AND CREDIBILITY OF THE NATIONAL RECORDS.
The religious beliefs of the modern upholders of Shintō may be ascertained without much difficulty by a perusal of the works of the leaders of the movement which has endeavoured during the last century and a half to destroy the influence of Buddhism and of the Chinese philosophy, and which has latterly succeeded to some extent in supplanting those two foreign systems. But in Japan, as elsewhere, it has been impossible for men really to turn back a thousand years in religious thought and act; and when we try to discover the primitive opinions that were entertained by the Japanese people prior to the introduction of the Chinese culture, we are met by difficulties that at first seem insuperable. The documents are scanty, and the modern commentaries untrustworthy, for they are all written under the influence of a preconceived opinion. Moreover, the problem is apparently complicated by a mixture of races and mythologies, and by a filtering in of Chinese ideas previous to the compilation of documents of any sort, though these are considerations which have hitherto scarcely been taken into account by foreigners, and are designedly neglected and obscured by such narrowly patriotic native writers as Motowori and Hirata.
In the political field the difficulties are not less, but rather greater; ​for when once the Imperial House and the centralized Japanese polity, as we know it from the sixth or seventh century of our era downwards, became fully established, it was but too clearly in the interest of the powers that be to efface as far as possible the trace of different governmental arrangements which may have preceded them, and to cause it to be believed that, as things were then, so had they always been. The Emperor Tem-mu, with his anxiety to amend “the deviations from truth and the empty falsehoods” of the historical documents preserved by the various families, and the author of the “Chronicles of Japan” with his elaborate system of fictitious dates, recur to our minds, and we ask ourselves to what extent similar garblings of history,—sometimes intentional, sometimes unintentional,—may have gone on during earlier ages, when there was even less to check them than there was in the eighth century. If, therefore, the translator here gives expression to a few opinions founded chiefly on a careful study of the text of the “Records of Ancient Matters” helped out by a study of the “Chronicles of Japan,” he would be understood to do so with great diffidence, especially with regard to his few (so to speak) constructive remarks. As to the destructive side of the criticism, there need be less hesitation; for the old histories bear evidence too conclusively against themselves for it to be possible for the earlier portions of them, at least, to stand the test of sober investigation. Before endeavouring to piece together the little that is found in the “Records” to illustrate the beliefs of Archaic Japanese times, it will be necessary, at the risk of dulness, to give a summary of the old traditions as they lie before us in their entirety, after which will be hazarded a few speculations on the subject of the earlier tribes which combined to form the Japanese people; for the four questions of religious beliefs, of political arrangements, of race, and of the credibility of documents, all hang closely together and, properly speaking, form but one highly complex problem.
Greatly condensed, the Early Japanese traditions amount to this: After an indefinitely long period, during which were born a number of abstract deities, who are differently enumerated in the “Records” and in the “Chronicles,” two of these deities, a brother and sister named Izanagi and Izanami (e.i., the “Male Who Invites” and the “Female Who Invites”), are united in marriage, and give birth to the various islands ​of the Japanese archipelago. When they have finished producing islands, they proceed to the production of a large number of gods and goddesses, many of whom correspond to what we should call personifications of the powers of nature, though personification is a word which, in its legitimate acceptation, is foreign to the Japanese mind. The birth of the Fire-God causes Izanami’s death, and the most striking episode of the whole mythology then ensues, when her husband, Orpheus-like, visits her in the under-world to implore her to return to him. She would willingly do so, and bids him wait while she consults with the deities of the place. But he, impatient at her long tarrying, breaks off one of the end-teeth of the comb stuck in the left bunch of his hair, lights it and goes in, only to find her a hideous mass of corruption, in whose midst are seated the eight Gods of Thunder. This episode ends with the deification of three peaches who had assisted him in his retreat before the armies of the under-world, and with bitter words exchanged between him and his wife, who herself pursues him as far as the “Even Pass of Hades.”
Returning to Himuka in south-western Japan, Izanagi purifies himself by bathing in a stream, and, as he does so, fresh deities are born from each article of clothing that he throws down on the river-bank, and from each part of his person. One of these deities was the Sun-Goddess, who was born from his left eye, while the Moon-God sprang from his right eye, and the last born of all, Susa-no-Wo, whose name the translator renders by “the Impetuous Male,” was born from his nose. Between these three children their father divides the inheritance of the universe.
At this point the story loses its unity. The Moon-God is no more heard of, and the traditions concerning the Sun-Goddess and those concerning the “Impetuous Male Deity” diverge in a manner which is productive of inconsistencies in the remainder of the mythology. The Sun-Goddess and the “Impetuous Male Deity” have a violent quarrel, and at last the latter breaks a hole in the roof of the hall in Heaven where his sister is sitting at work with the celestial weaving-maidens, and through it lets fall “a heavenly piebald horse which he had flayed ​with a backward flaying.” The consequences of this act were so disastrous, that the Sun-Goddess withdrew for a season into a cave, from which the rest of the eight hundred myriad (according to the “Chronicles” eighty myriad) deities with difficulty allured her. The “Impetuous Male Deity” was thereupon banished, and the Sun-Goddess remained mistress of the field. Yet, strange to say, she thenceforward retires into the background, and the most bulky section of the mythology consists of stories concerning the “Impetuous Male Deity” and his descendants, who are represented as the monarchs of Japan, or rather of the province of Idzumo. The “Impetuous Male Deity” himself, whom his father had charged with the dominion of the sea, never assumes that rule, but first has a curiously told amorous adventure and an encounter with an eight-forked serpent in Idzumo, and afterwards reappears as the capricious and filthy deity of Hades, who however seems to retain some power over the land of the living, as he invests his descendant of the sixth generation with the sovereignty of Japan. Of this latter personage a whole cycle of stories is told, all centering in Idzumo. We learn of his conversations with a hare and with a mouse, of the prowess and cleverness which he displayed on the occasion of a visit to his ancestor in Hades, which is in this cycle of traditions a much less mysterious place than the Hades visited by Izanagi, of his amours, of his triumph over his eighty brethren, of his reconciliation with his jealous empress, and of his numerous descendants, many of whom have names that are particularly difficult of comprehension. We hear too in a tradition, which ends in a pointless manner, of a microscopic deity who comes across the sea to ask this monarch of Idzumo to share the sovereignty with him.
This last-mentioned legend repeats itself in the sequel. The Sun-Goddess, who on her second appearance is constantly represented as acting in concert with the “High August Producing Wondrous Deity,”—one of the abstractions mentioned at the commencement of the “Records,”—resolves to bestow the sovereignty of Japan on a child of whom it is doubtful whether he were hers or that of her brother the “Impetuous Male Deity.” Three embassies are sent from Heaven to Idzumo to arrange matters, but it is only a fourth that is successful, the final ambassadors obtaining the submission of the monarch or deity of ​Idzumo, who surrenders his sovereignty and promises to serve the new dynasty (apparently in the under-world), if a palace or temple be built for him and he be appropriately worshipped. Thereupon the child of the deity whom the Sun-Goddess had originally wished to make sovereign of Japan, descends to earth,—not to Idzumo in the north-west, be it mentioned, as the logical sequence of the story would lead one to expect,—but to the peak of a mountain in the south-western island of Kiushiu.
Here follows a quaint tale accounting for the odd appearance of the bèche-de-mer, and another to account for the shortness of the lives of mortals, after which we are told of the birth under peculiar circumstances of the heaven-descended deity’s three sons. Two of these, Ho-deri and Ho-wori, whose names may be Englished as “Fire-Shine” and “Fire-Subside,” are the heroes of a very curious legend, which includes an elaborate account of a visit paid by the latter to the palace of the God of Ocean, and of a curse or spell which gained for him the victory over his elder brother, and enabled him to dwell peacefully in his palace at Takachiho for the space of five hundred and eighty years,—the first statement resembling a date which the “Records” contain. This personage’s son married his own aunt, and was the father of four children, one of whom “treading on the crest of the waves, crossed over to the Eternal Land,” while a second “went into the sea plain,” and the two others moved eastward, fighting with the chiefs of Kibi and Yamato, having adventures with gods both with and without tails, being assisted by a miraculous sword and a gigantic crow, and naming the various places they passed through after incidents in their own career, as “the Impetuous Male” and other divine personages had done before them. One of these brothers was Kamu-Yamato-Ihare-Biko, who (the other having died before him) was first given the title of Jim-mu Ten-nō more than fourteen centuries after the date which in the “Chronicles” is assigned as that of his decease.
Henceforth Yamato, which had scarcely been mentioned before, and the provinces adjacent to it become the centre of the story, and Idzumo again emerges into importance. A very indecent love-tale forms a bridge which unites the two fragments of the mythology; and the “Great Deity of Miwa,” who is identified with the deposed monarch of Idzumo, appears on the scene. Indeed during the rest of the story this ​“Great Deity of Miwa,” and his colleague the “Small August Deity” (Sukuna-Mi-Kami), the deity Izasa-Wake, the three Water-Gods of Sumi, and the “Great Deity of Kadzuraki,” of whom there is so striking a mention in Sect. CLVIII, form, with the Sun-Goddess and with a certain divine sword preserved at the temple of Isonokami in Yamato, the only objects of worship specially named, the other gods and goddesses being no more heard of. This portion of the story is closed by an account of the troubles which inaugurated the reign of Jim-mu’s successor, Sui-sei, and then occurs a blank of (according to the accepted chronology) five hundred years, during which absolutely nothing is told us excepting dreary genealogies, the place where each sovereign dwelt and where he was buried, and the age to which he lived,—this after the minute details which had previously been given concerning the successive gods or monarchs down to Sui-sei inclusive. It should likewise be noted that the average age of the first seventeen monarchs (counting Jim-mu Ten-nō as the first according to received ideas) is nearly 96 years if we follow the “Records” and over a hundred if we follow the accepted chronology which is based chiefly on the constantly divergent statements contained in the “Chronicles.” The age of several of the monarchs exceeds 120 years.
The above-mentioned lapse of an almost blank period of five centuries brings us to the reign of the Emperor known to history by the name of Sū-jin, whose life of one hundred and sixty-eight years (one hundred and twenty according to the “Chronicles”) is supposed to have immediately preceded the Christian era. In this reign the former monarch of Idzumo or god of Miwa again appears and produces a pestilence, of the manner of staying which Sū-jin is warned in a dream, while a curious but highly indecent episode tells us how a person called Oho-Tata-Ne-Ko was known to be a son of the deity in question, and was therefore appointed high priest of his temple. In the ensuing reign an elaborate legend, involving a variety of circumstances as miraculous as any in the earlier portion of the mythology, again ​centres in the necessity of pacifying the great god of Idzumo; and this, with details of internecine strife in the Imperial family, of the sovereign’s amours, and of the importation of the orange from the “Eternal Land,” brings us to the cycle of traditions of which Yamato-Take, a son of the Emperor Kei-kō, is the hero. This prince, after slaying one of his brothers in the privy, accomplishes the task of subduing both western and eastern Japan; and, notwithstanding certain details which are unsavoury to the European taste, his story, taken as a whole, is one of the most striking in the book. He performs marvels of valour, disguises himself as a woman to slay the brigands, is the possessor of a magic sword and fire-striker, has a devoted wife who stills the fury of the waves by sitting down upon their surface, has encounters with a deer and with a boar who are really gods in disguise, and finally dies on his way westward before he can reach his home in Yamato. His death is followed by a highly mythological account of the laying to rest of the white bird into which he ended by being transformed.
The succeeding reign is a blank, and the next after that transports us without a word of warning to quite another scene. The sovereign’s home is now in Tsukushi, the south-western island of the Japanese archipelago, and four of the gods, through the medium of the sovereign’s wife, who is known to history as the Empress Jin-gō, reveal the existence of the land of Korea, of which, however, this is not the first mention. The Emperor disbelieves the divine message, and is punished by death for his incredulity. But the Empress, after a special consultation between her prime minister and the gods, and the performance of various religious ceremonies, marshals her fleet, and, with the assistance of the fishes both great and small and of a miraculous wave, reaches Shiragi (one of the ancient divisions of Korea), and subdues it. She then returns to Japan, the legend ending with a curiously naïve tale of how she sat a-fishing one day on a shoal in the river Wo-gawa in Tsukushi with threads picked out of her skirt for lines.
The next section shows her going up by sea to Yamato,—another joint in the story, by means of which the Yamato cycle of legends and ​the Tsukushi cycle are brought into apparent unity. The “Chronicles of Japan” have even improved upon this by making Jin-gō’s husband dwell in Yamato at the commencement of his reign and only remove to Tsukushi later, so that if the less elaborated “Records” had not been preserved, the two threads of the tradition would have been still more difficult to unravel. The Empress’s army defeats the troops raised by the native kings or princes, who are represented as her step-sons; and from that time forward the story runs on in a single channel and always centres in Yamato. China likewise is now first mentioned, books are said to have been brought over from the mainland, and we hear of the gradual introduction of various useful arts. Even the annals of the reign of Ō-jin however, during which this civilizing impulse from abroad is said to have commenced, are not free from details as miraculous as any in the earlier portions of the book. Indeed Sects. CXIV–CXVI of the following translation, which form part of the narrative of his reign, are occupied with the recital of one of the most fanciful tales of the whole mythology. The monarch himself is said to have lived a hundred and thirty years, while his successor lived eighty-three (according to the “Chronicles” Ō-jin lived a hundred and ten and his successor Nin-toku reigned eighty-seven years). It is not till the next reign that the miraculous ceases, a fact which significantly coincides with the reign in which, according to a statement in the “Chronicles,” “historiographers were first appointed to all the provinces to record words and events, and forward archives from all directions.” This brings us to the commencement of the fifth century of our era, just three centuries before the compilation of our histories, but only two centuries before the compilation of the first history of which mention has been preserved. From that time the story in the “Records,” though not well told, gives us some very curious pictures, and reads as if it were reliable. It is tolerably full for a few reigns, after which it again dwindles into mere genealogies, carrying us down to the commencement of the seventh century. The “Chronicles,” on the contrary, give us full details down to A.D. 701, that is to within nineteen years of the date of their compilation.
The reader who has followed this summary, or who will take the trouble to read through the whole text for himself, will perceive that there is no break in the story,—at least no chronological break,—and ​no break between the fabulous and the real, unless indeed it be at the commencement of the fifth century of our era, i.e. more than a thousand years later than the date usually accepted as the commencement of genuine Japanese history. The only breaks are,—not chronological,—but topographical.
This fact of the continuity of the Japanese mythology and history has been fully recognized by the leading native commentators, whose opinions are those considered orthodox by modern Shintoists; and they draw from it the conclusion that everything in the standard national histories must be equally accepted as literal truth. All persons however cannot force their minds into the limits of such a belief; and early in the last century a celebrated writer and thinker, Arawi Hakuseki, published a work in which, while accepting the native mythology as an authentic chronicle of events, he did so with the reservation of proving to his own satisfaction that all the miraculous portions thereof were allegories, and the gods only men under another name. In this particular, the elasticity of the Japanese word for “deity,” kami, which has already been noticed, stood the eastern Euhemerus in good stead. Some of his explanations are however extremely comical, and it is evident that such a system enables the person who uses it to prove whatever he has a mind to. In the present century a diluted form of the same theory was adopted by Tachibana no Moribe, who, although endeavouring to remain an orthodox Shintoist, yet decided that some of the (so to speak) uselessly miraculous incidents need not be believed in as revealed truth. Such, for instance, are the story of the speaking mouse, and that of Izanagi’s head-dress turning into a bunch of grapes. He accounts for many of these details by the supposition that they are what he calls wosana-goto, i.e. “child-like words,” and thinks that they were invented for the sake of fixing the story in the minds of children, and are not binding on modern adults as articles of faith. He is also willing to allow that some ​passages show traces of Chinese influence, and he blames Motowori’s uncompromising championship of every iota of the existing text of the “Records of Ancient Matters.” As belonging to this same school of what may perhaps be termed “rationalistic believers” in Japanese mythology, a contemporary Christian writer, Mr. Takahashi Gorō, must also be mentioned. Treading in the foot-steps of Arawi Hakuseki, but bringing to bear on the legends of his own country some knowledge of the mythology of other lands, he for instance explains the traditions of the Sun-Goddess and of the Eight-Forked Serpent of Yamada by postulating the existence of an ancient queen called Sun, whose brother, after having been banished from her realm for his improper behaviour, killed an enemy whose name was Serpent, etc., while such statements as that the microscopic deity who came over the waves to share the sovereignty of Idzumo would not tell his name, are explained by the assertion that, being a foreigner, he was unintelligible for some time until he had learnt the language. It is certainly strange that such theorists should not see that they are undermining with one hand that which they endeavour to prop up with the other, and that their own individual fancy is made by them the sole standard of historic truth. Yet Mr. Takahashi confidently asserts that “his explanations have nothing forced or fanciful” in them, and that “they cannot fail to solve the doubts even of the greatest of doubters.”
The general habit of the more sceptical Japanese of the present day,—i.e. of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the educated,—seems to be to reject, or at least to ignore, the history of the gods, while implicitly accepting the history of the emperors from Jim-mu downwards; and in so doing they have been followed with but little reserve by most Europeans,—almanacs, histories and cyclopædias all continuing to repeat on the antiquated authority of such writers as Kaempfer and Titsingh, that Japan possesses an authentic history covering more than two thousand years, while Siebold and Hoffmann even go the length of discussing the hour of Jim-mu’s accession in the year 660 B.C! This is the attitude of mind now sanctioned by the governing class. Thus, in the historical compilations used as text-books in the schools, the ​stories of the gods,—that is to say the Japanese traditions down to Jim-mu exclusive,—are either passed over in silence or dismissed in a few sentences, while the annals of the human sovereigns,—that is to say the Japanese traditions from Jim-mu inclusive,—are treated precisely as if the events therein related had happened yesterday, and were as incontrovertibly historical as latter statements, for which there is contemporary evidence. The same plan is pursued elsewhere in official publications. Thus, to take but one example among many, the Imperial Commissioners to the Vienna Exhibition, in their “Notice sur l'Empire du Japon,” tell us that “L’histoire de la dynastie impériale remonte très-haut. L’obscurité entoure ses débuts, vu l’absence de documents réguliers ou d’un calendrier parfait. Le premier Empereur de la dynastie présente, dont il reste des annales dignes de confiance, est Jin-mou-ten-nô qui organisa un soulèvement dans la province de Hiuga, marcha à l’Est avec ses compagnons, fonda sa capitale dans la vallée de Kashi-hara dans le Yamato, et monta sur le trône comme Empereur. C’est de cet Empereur que descend, par une succession régulière, la présente famille régnante du Japon. C’est de l’année de l’avènement de Jin-mou-ten-nô que date l’ère japonaise (Année 1-660 avant Jésus-Christ.”)
As for the ère Japonaise mentioned by the commissioners, it maybe pertinent to observe that it was only introduced by an edict dated 15th Dec., 1872, that is to say just a fortnight before the publication of their report. And this era, this accession, is confidently placed thirteen or fourteen centuries before the first history which records it was written, nine centuries before (at the earliest computation) the art of writing was introduced into the country, and on the sole authority of books teeming with miraculous legends!! Does such a proceeding need any comment after once being formulated in precise terms, and can any unprejudiced person continue to accept the early Japanese chronology and the first thousand years of the so-called history of Japan? ************ Leaving this discusion, let us now see whether any information ​relative to the early religious and political state of the Japanese can be gleaned from the pages of the “Records” and of the “Chronicles.” There are fragments of information,—fragments of two sorts,—some namely of clear import, others which are rather a matter for inference and for argument. Let us take the positive fragments first—the notices as to cosmological ideas, dreams, prayers, etc.
The first thing that strikes the student is that what, for want of a more appropriate name, we must call the religion of the Early Japanese, was not an organized religion. We can discover in it nothing corresponding to the body of dogma, the code of morals, and the sacred book authoritatively enforcing both, with which we are familiar in civilized religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. What we find is a bundle of miscellaneous superstitions rather than a coordinated system. Dreams evidently were credited with great importance, the future being supposed to be foretold in them, and the will of the gods made known. Sometimes even an actual object, such as a wonderful sword, was sent down in a dream, thus to our ideas mixing the material with the spiritual. The subject did not, however, present itself in that light to the Early Japanese, to whom there was evidently but one order of phenomena,—what we should call the natural order. Heaven, or rather the Sky, was an actual place,—not more ethereal than earth, nor thought of as the abode of the blessed after death,—but simply a “high plain” situated above Japan and communicating with Japan by a bridge or ladder, and forming the residence of some of those powerful personages called kami,—a word, which we must make shift to translate by “god” or “goddess,” or “deity.” An arrow shot from earth could reach Heaven, and make a hole in it. There was at least one mountain in Heaven, and one river with a broad stony bed like those with which the traveller in Japan becomes familiar, one or two caves, one or more wells, and animals, and trees. There is, however, some confusion as to the mountain,—the celebrated Mount Kagu,—for there is one of that name in the province of Yamato.
Some of the gods dwelt here on earth, or descended hither from Heaven, and had children by human women. Such, for instance, was the emperor Jim-mu’s great-grandfather. Some few gods had tails or ​were otherwise personally remarkable; and “savage deities” are often mentioned as inhabiting certain portions of Japan, both in the so-called “Divine Age” and during the reigns of the human emperors down to a time corresponding, according to the generally received chronology, with the first or second century of the Christian era. The human emperors themselves, moreover, were sometimes spoken of as deities, and even made personal use of that designation. The gods occasionally transformed themselves into animals, and at other times simple tangible objects were called gods,—or at least they were called kami; for the gulf separating the Japanese from the English term can never be too often recalled to mind. The word kami, as previously mentioned, properly signifies “superior,” and it would be putting more into it than it really implies to say that the Early Japanese “deified,”—in our sense of the verb to “deify,”—the peaches which Izanagi used to pelt his assailants with, or any other natural objects whatsoever. It would, indeed, be to attribute to them a flight of imagination of which they were not capable, and a habit of personification not in accordance with the genius of their language. Some of the gods are mentioned collectively as “bad Deities like unto the flies in the fifth moon”; but there is nothing approaching a systematic division into good spirits and bad spirits. In fact the word “spirit” itself is not applicable at all to the gods of Archaic Japan. They were, like the gods of Greece, conceived of only as more powerful human beings. They were born, and some of them died, though here again there is inconsistency, as the death of some of them is mentioned in a manner leading one to suppose that they were conceived of as being then at an end, whereas in other cases such death seems simply to denote transference to Hades, or to what is called “the One Road,” which is believed to be a synonym for Hades. Sometimes, again, a journey to Hades is undertaken by a god without any reference to his death. Nothing, indeed, could be less consistent than the various details.
Hades itself is another instance of this inconsistency. In the legend of Oho-Kuni-Nushi (the “Master of the Great Land”),—one of the Idzumo cycle of legends,—Hades is described exactly as if it were ​part of the land of the living, or exactly as if it were Heaven, which indeed comes to the same thing. It has its trees, its houses, its family quarrels, etc., etc. In the legend of Izanagi, on the other hand, Hades means simply the abode of horrible putrefaction and of the vindictive dead, and is fitly described by the god himself who had ventured thither as “a hideous and polluted land.” The only point in which the legends agree is in placing between the upper earth and Hades a barrier called the “Even Pass (or Hill) of Hades.” The state of the dead in general is nowhere alluded to, nor are the dying ever made to refer to a future world, whether good or evil.
The objects of worship were of course the gods, or some of them. It has already been stated that during the later portions of the story, whose scene is laid almost exclusively on earth, the Sun-Goddess, the deity Izasa-Wake, the Divine Sword of Isonokami, the Small August Deity (Sukuna-Mi-Kami), the “Great Gods” of Miwa and of Kadzuraki and the three Water-Deities of Sumi, alone are mentioned as having been specially worshipped. Of these the first and the last appear together, forming a sort of quaternion, while the other five appear singly and have no connection with each other. The deities of the mountains, the deities of the rivers, the deities of the sea, etc., are also mentioned in the aggregate, as are likewise the heavenly deities and the earthly deities; and the Empress Jin-gō is represented as conciliating them all previous to her departure for Korea by “putting into a gourd the ashes of a maki tree, and likewise making a quantity of chopsticks and also of leaf-platters, and scattering them all on the waves.”
This brings us to the subject of religious rites,—a subject on which we long for fuller information than the texts afford. That the conciliatory offerings made to the gods were of a miscellaneous nature will be expected from the quotation just made. Nevertheless, a very natural method was in the main followed; for the people offered the things by which they themselves set most store, as we hear at a later period of the poet Tsurayuki, when in a storm at sea, flinging his mirror into the waves because he had but one. The Early Japanese made offerings of ​two kinds of cloth, one being hempen cloth and the other cloth manufactured from the bark of the paper mulberry,—offerings very precious in their eyes, but which have in modern times been allowed to degenerate into useless strips of paper. They likewise offered shields, spears, and other things. Food was offered both to the gods and to the dead; indeed, the palace or tomb of the dead monarch and the temple of the god cannot always be distinguished from each other, and, as has already been mentioned, the Japanese use the same word miya for “palace” and for “temple.” Etymologically signifying “august house,” it is naturally susceptible of what are to us two distinct meanings.
With but one exception, the “Records” do not give us the words of any prayers (or, as the Japanese term norito has elsewhere been translated, “rituals”). Conversations with the gods are indeed detailed, but no devotional utterances. Fortunately however a number of very ancient prayers have been preserved in other books, and translations of some of them by Mr. Satow will be found scattered through the volumes of the Transactions of this Society. They consist mostly of declarations of praise and statements of offerings made, either in return for favours received or conditionally on favours being granted. They are all in prose, and hymns do not seem to have been in use. Indeed of the hundred and eleven Songs preserved in the “Records,” not one has any religious reference.
The sacred rite of which most frequent mention is made is purification by water. Trial by hot water is also alluded to in both histories, but not till a time confessedly posterior to the commencement of intercourse with the mainland. We likewise hear of compacts occasionally entered into with a god, and somewhat resembling our European wager, oath, or curse. Priests are spoken of in a few passages, but without any details. We do not hear of their functions being in any way mediatorial, and the impression conveyed is that they did not exist in very early times as a separate class. When they did come into existence, the profession soon became hereditary, according to the general tendency in Japan towards the hereditability of offices and occupations.
Miscellaneous superstitions crop up in many places. Some of these ​were evidently obsolescent or unintelligible at the time when the legends crystallized into their present shape, and stories are told purporting to give their origin. Thus we learn either in the “Records” or in the “Chronicles,” or in both works, why it is unlucky to use only one light, to break off the teeth of a comb at night-time, and to enter the house with straw hat and rain-coat on. The world-wide dread of going against the sun is connected with the Jim-mu legend, and recurs elsewhere. We also hear of charms,—for instance, of the wondrous “Herb-Quelling Sabre” found by Susa-no-Wo (the “Impetuous Male Deity”) inside a serpent’s tail, and still preserved as one of the Imperial regalia. Other such charms were the “tide-flowing jewel” and “tide-ebbing jewel,” that obtained for Jim-mu’s grandfather the victory over his elder brother, together with the fish-hook which figures so largely in the same legend. Divination by means of the shoulder-blade of a stag was a favourite means of ascertaining the will of the gods. Sometimes also human beings seem to have been credited in a vague manner with the power of prophetic utterance. Earthenware pots were buried at the point of his departure by an intending traveller. In a fight the initial arrow was regarded with superstitious awe. The great precautions with which the Empress Jin-gō is said to have set out on her expedition to Korea have already been alluded to, and indeed the commencement of any action or enterprise seems to have had special importance attributed to it.
To conclude this survey of the religious beliefs of the Early Japanese by referring, as was done in the case of the arts of life, to certain notable features which are conspicuous by their absence, attention may ​be called to the fact that there is no tradition of a deluge, no testimony to any effect produced on the imagination by the earthquakes from which the Japanese islanders suffer such constant alarms, no trace of star-worship, no notion of incarnation or of transmigration. This last remark goes to show that the Japanese mythology had assumed its present shape before the first echo of Buddhism reverberated on these shores. But the absence of any tradition of a deluge or inundation is still more remakable, both because such catastrophes are likely to occur occasionally in all lands, and because the imagination of most nations seems to have been greatly impressed by their occurrence. Moreover what is specifically known to us as the Deluge has been lately claimed as an ancient Altaïc myth. Yet here we have the oldest of the undoubtedly Altaïc nations without any legend of the kind. As for the neglect of the stars, round whose names the imagination of other races has twined such fanciful conceits, it is as characteristic of Modern as of Archaic Japan. The Chinese designations of the constellations, and some few Chinese legends relating to them, have been borrowed in historic times; but no Japanese writer has ever thought of looking in the stars for “the poetry of heaven.” Another detail worthy of mention is that the number seven, which in so many countries has been considered sacred, is here not prominent in any way, its place being taken by eight. Thus we have Eight Great Islands, an Eight-forked Serpent, a beard Eighty Hand-breaths long, a God named “Eight-Thousand Spears,” Eighty or Eight Hundred Myriads of Deities, etc., etc. The commentators think it necessary to tell us that all these eights and eighties need not be taken literally, as they simply mean a great number. The fact remains that the number eight had, for some unknown reason, a special significance attached to it; and as the documents which mention eight also mention nine and ten, besides higher numbers, and as in some test cases, such as that of the Eight Great Islands, each of the eight is separately enumerated, it is plain that when the Early Japanese said eight they meant eight, though they may doubtless have used that number in a vague manner, as we do a dozen, a hundred, and a thousand.
How glaringly different all this is from the fanciful accounts of Shintō that have been given by some recent popular writers calls for ​no comment. Thus one of them, whom another quotes as an authority, tells us that Shintō “consists in the belief that the productive ethereal spirit being expanded through the whole universe, every part is in some degree impregnated with it, and therefore every part is in some measure the seat of the deity; whence local gods and goddesses are everywhere worshipped, and consequently multiplied without end. Like the ancient Romans and the Greeks, they acknowledge a Supreme Being, the first, the supreme, the intellectual, by which men have been reclaimed from rudeness and barbarism to elegance and refinement, and been taught through privileged men and women, not only to live with more comfort, but to die with better hopes.” (!) Truly, when one peruses such utterly groundless assertions,—for that here quoted is but one among many,—one is tempted to believe that the nineteenth century must form part of the early mythopœic age.
With regard to the question of government, we learn little beyond such vague statements as that to so-and-so was yielded by his eighty brethren the sovereignty of the land of Idzumo, or that Izanagi divided the dominion over all things between his three children, bestowing on one the “Plain of High Heaven,” on another the Dominion of the Night, and on the third the “Sea-Plain.” But we do not in the earlier legends see such sovereignty actually administered. The heavenly gods seem rather to have been conceived as forming a sort of commonwealth, who decided things by meeting together in counsel in the stony bed of the “River of Heaven,” and taking the advice of the shrewdest of their number. Indeed the various divine assemblies, to which the story in the “Records” and “Chronicles” introduces us, remind us of nothing so much as of the village assemblies of primitive tribes in many parts of the world, where the cleverness of one and the general willingness to follow his suggestions fill the place of the more definite organization of later times.
Descending from heaven to earth, we find little during the so-called “Divine Age” but stories of isolated individuals and families; and it is not till the narrative of the wars of the earlier Emperors commences, that any kind of political organization comes ​into view. Then at once we hear of chieftains in every locality, who lead their men to battle, and are seemingly the sole depositories of power, each in his microscopic sphere. The legend of Jim-mu itself, however, is sufficient to show that autocracy, as we understand it, was not characteristic of the government of the Tsukushi tribes; for Jim-mu and his brother, until the latter’s death, are represented as joint chieftains of their host. Similarly we find that the “Territorial Owners” of Yamato, and the “Rulers” of Idzumo, whom Jim-mu or his successors are said to have subjugated, are constantly spoken of in the Plural, as if to intimate that they exercised a divided sovereignty. During the whole of the so-called “Human Age” we meet, both in parts of the country which were already subject to the Imperial rule and in others which were not yet annexed, with local magnates bearing these same titles of “Territorial Owners,” “Rulers,” “Chiefs,” etc.; and the impression left on the mind is that in early historical times the sovereign’s power was not exercised directly over all parts of Japan, but that in many cases the local chieftains continued to hold sway though owning some sort of allegiance to the emperor in Yamato, while in others the emperor was strong enough to depose these local rulers, and to put in their place his own kindred or retainers, who however exercised unlimited authority in their own districts, and used the same titles as had been borne by the former native rulers,—that, in fact, the government was feudal rather than centralized. This characteristic of the political organization of Early Japan has not altogether escaped the attention of the native commentators. Indeed the great Shintō scholar Hirata not only recognizes the fact, but endeavours to prove that the system of centralization which obtained during the eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, and part of the twelfth centuries, and which has been revived in our own day, is nothing but an imitation of the Chinese bureaucratic system; and he asserts that an organized feudalism, similar to that which existed from the twelfth century down to the year 1867, was the sole really ancient and national Japanese form of government. The translator cannot follow Hirata to such lengths, as he sees no evidence in the early histories of the intricate organization of mediæval Japan. But that, beyond the immediate limits of the Imperial domain, the government resembled feudalism rather than centralization seems ​indisputable. It is also true that the seventh century witnessed a sudden move in the direction of bureaucratic organization, many of the titles which had up till that time denoted actual provincial chieftains being then either suppressed, or else allowed to sink into mere “gentile names.” Another remark which is suggested by a careful perusal of the two ancient histories is that the Imperial succession was in early historical times very irregular. Strange gaps occur as late as the sixth century of our era; and even when it was one of the children who inherited his father’s throne, that child was rarely the eldest son. ************ What now are we to gather from this analysis of the religious and political features revealed to us by a study of the books containing the Early Japanese traditions as to the still remoter history and tribal divisions of Japan, and as to the origin of the Japanese legends? Very little that is certain, perhaps; but, in the opinion of the present writer, two or three interesting probabilities.
In view of the multiplicity of gods and the complications of the so-called historical traditions, he thinks that it would be à priori difficult to believe that the development of Japanese civilization should have run on in a single stream broken only in the third century by the commencement of intercourse with the mainland of Asia. We are, however, not left to such a merely theoretical consideration. There are clear indications of there having been three centres of legendary cycles, three streams which mixed together to form the Japan which meets us at the dawn of authentic history in the fifth century of our era. One of these centres,—the most important in the mythology,—is Idzumo; the second is Yamato; the third is Tsukushi, called in modern times Kiushiu. Eastern and Northern Japan count for nothing; indeed, much of the North-East and North was, down to comparatively recent times, occupied by the barbarous Ainos or, as they are called by the Japanese Yemishi, Yebisu or Yezo. That the legends or traditions derived from the three parts of the country here mentioned accord but imperfectly together is an opinion which has already been alluded to, and upon which light may perhaps be thrown by a more thorough sifting of the myths and beliefs classified according to this three-fold system. The question of the ancient division of Japan into several independent states ​is, however, not completely a matter of opinion. For we have in the “Shan Hai Ching” a positive statement concerning a Northern and a Southern Yamato (倭), and the Chinese annals of both the Han dynasties tell us of the division of the country into a much larger number of kingdoms, of which, according to the annals of the later Han dynasty, Yamato (邪馬臺) was the most powerful. A later official Chinese historian also tells us that Jih-pên (日本, our Japan) and Yamato had been two different states, and that Jih-pên was reported to have swallowed up Yamato. By Jih-pên the author evidently meant to speak of the island of Tsukushi or of part of it. That the Chinese were fairly well acquainted with Japan is shown by the fact of there being in the old Chinese literature more than one mention of “the country of the hairy people beyond the mountains in the East and North,”—that is of the Yemishi or Ainos. No Chinese book would seem to mention Idzumo as having formed a separate country; and this evidence must be allowed its full weight. It is possible, of course, that Idzumo may have been incorporated with Yamato before the conquest of the latter by the Tsukushi people, and in this case some of the inconsistencies of the history may be traceable to a confusion of the traditions concerning the conquest of Idzumo by Yamato and of those concerning the conquest of Yamato by Tsukushi. Perhaps too (for so almost impossible a task is it to reconstruct history out of legend) there may not, after all, be sufficient warrant for believing in the former existence of Idzumo as a separate state, though it certainly seems hard to account otherwise for the peculiar place that Idzumo occupies in mythic story. In any case, and whatever light may hereafter be thrown on this very obscure question, it must be remembered that, so far as clear native documentary evidence reaches, 400 A.D. is approximately the highest limit of reliable Japanese history. Beyond that date we are at once confronted with the miraculous; and if any facts relative to earlier Japan are to be extracted from the pages of the “Records” and “Chronicles,” it must be by a process very different from that of simply reading and taking their assertions upon trust.
With regard to the origin, or rather to the significance, of the clearly fanciful portions of the Japanese legends, the question here ​mooted as to the probability of the Japanese mythology being a mixed one warns us to exercise more than usual caution in endeavouring to interpret it. In fact, it bids us wait to interpret it until such time as further research shall have shown which legends belong together. For if they are of heterogeneous origin, it is hopeless to attempt to establish a genealogical tree of the gods, and the very phrase so often heard in discussions on this subject,—“the original religious beliefs of the Japanese,”—ceases to have any precise meaning; for different beliefs may have been equally ancient and original, but distinguished geographically by belonging to different parts of the country. Furthermore it may not be superfluous to call attention to the fact that the gods who are mentioned in the opening phrases of the histories as we now have them are not therefore necessarily the gods that were most anciently worshipped. Surely in religions, as in books, it is not often the preface that is written first. And yet this simple consideration has been constantly neglected, and, one after another, European writers having a tincture of knowledge of Japanese mythology, tell us of original Dualities, Trinities, and Supreme Deities, without so much as pausing to notice that the only two authorities in the matter,—viz., the “Records” and the “Chronicles,”—differ most gravely in the lists they furnish of primary gods. If the present writer ventured to throw out a suggestion where so many random assertions have been made, it would be to the effect that the various abstractions which figure at the commencement of the “Records” and of the “Chronicles” were probably later growths, and perhaps indeed mere inventions of individual priests. There is nothing either in the histories or in the Shintō Rituals to show that these gods, or some one or more of them, were in early days, as has been sometimes supposed, the objects of a purer worship which was afterwards obscured by the legends of Izanagi, Izanami, and their numerous descendants. On the contrary, with the exception of the deity Taka-Mi-Musu-Bi, they are no sooner mentioned than they vanish into space.
​Whether it is intrinsically likely that so rude a race as the Early Japanese, and a race so little given to metaphysical speculation as the Japanese at all times of their history, should have commenced by a highly abstract worship which they afterwards completely abandoned, is a question which may better be left to those whose general knowledge of early peoples and early religious beliefs entitles their decisions to respect. Their assistance, likewise, even after the resolution of the Japanese mythology into its several component parts, must be called in by the specialist to help in deciding how much of this mythology should be interpreted according to the “solar” method now so popular in England, how much should be accepted as history more or less perverted, how much should be regarded as embodying attempts at explaining facts in nature, and what residue may be rejected as simple fabrication of the priesthood in comparatively late times. Those who are personally acquainted with the Japanese character will probably incline to enlarge the area of the three latter divisions more than would be prudent in the case of the highly imaginative Aryans, and to point out that, though some few Japanese legends or portions of legends can be traced to false etymologies invented to account for names of places, and are therefore true myths in the strictest acceptation of the term, yet the kindred process whereby personality is ascribed to inanimate objects,—a process which lies at the very root of Aryan mythology,—is altogether alien to the Japanese genius, and indeed to the Far-Eastern mind in general. Mythology thus originated has been aptly described as a “disease of language.” But all persons are not liable to catch the same disease, neither presumably are all languages; and it is hard to see how a linguistic disease which consists in mistaking a metaphor for a reality can attack a tongue to which metaphor, even in its tamest shape, is an almost total stranger. Thus not only have Japanese Nouns no Genders and Japanese Verbs no Persons, but the names of inanimate objects cannot even be used as the subjects of Transitive Verbs. Nowhere for instance in Japanese, whether Archaic, Classical, or Modern, do we meet ​with such metaphorical,—mythological,—phrases as “the hot wind melts the ice,” or “his conversation delights me,” where the words “wind” and “conversation” are spoken of as if they were personal agents. No, the idea is invariably rendered in some other and impersonal way. Yet what a distance separates such statements, in which the ordinary European reader unacquainted with any Altaïc tongue would scarcely recognize the existence of any personification at all, from the bolder flights of Aryan metaphor! Indeed, though Altaïc Asia has produced very few wise men, the words of its languages closely correspond to the definition of words as “the wise man’s counters”; for they are colourless and matter-of-fact, and rarely if ever carry him who speaks them above the level of sober reality. At the same time, it is patent that the sun plays some part in the Japanese mythology; and even the legend of Prince Yamato-Take, which has hitherto been generally accepted as historical or semi-historical, bears such close resemblance to legends in other countries which have been pronounced to be solar by great authorities that it may at least be worth while to subject it to investigation from that point of view. The present writer has already expressed his conviction that this matter is not one for the specialist to decide alone. He would only, from the Japanese point of view, suggest very particular caution in the application to Japanese legend of a method of interpretation which has elsewhere been fruitful of great results.
A further particular which is deserving of notice is the almost certain fact of a recension of the various traditions at a comparatively late date. This is partly shown by the amount of geographical knowledge displayed in the enumeration of the various islands supposed to have been given birth to by Izanagi and Izanami (the “Male who Invites” and the “Female who Invites”),—an amount and an exactness of knowledge unattainable at a time prior to the union under one rule of all the provinces mentioned, and significantly not extending much beyond those provinces. Such a recension may likewise be inferred,—if the opinion of the manifold origin of the Japanese traditions be accepted,—from the fairly ingenious manner in which their component parts have generally been welded together. The way in which one or two ​legends,—for instance, that of the curious curse pronounced by the younger brother Ho-wori on the elder Ho-deri—are repeated more than once exemplifies a less intelligent revision. Under this heading may, perhaps, be included the legends of the conquest of Yamato by the Emperor Jim-mu and of the conquest of the same country by the Empress Jin-gō, which certainly bear a suspicious likeness to each other. Of the subjection of Korea by this last-named personage it should be observed that the Chinese and Korean histories, so far as they are known to us, make no mention, and indeed the dates, as more specifically given in the “Chronicles,” clearly show the inconsistency of the whole story; for Jin-gō’s husband, the Emperor Chiū-ai, is said to have been born in the 19th year of the reign of Sei-mu, i.e. in A. D. 149, while his father, Prince Yamato-Take, is said to have died in the 43rd year of Kei-kō, i.e. in A. D. 113, so that there is an interval of thirty-six years between the death of the father and the birth of the son!
One peculiarly interesting piece of information to be derived from a careful study of the “Records” and “Chronicles” (though it is one on which the patriotic Japanese commentators preserve complete silence) is that, at the very earliest period to which the twilight of legend stretches back, Chinese influence had already begun to make itself felt in these islands, communicating to the inhabitants both implements and ideas. This is surely a fact of very particular importance, lending, as it does, its weight to the mass of evidence which goes to prove that in almost all known cases culture has been introduced from abroad, and has not been spontaneously developed. The traces of Chinese influence are indeed not numerous, but they are unmistakable. Thus we find chopsticks mentioned both in the Idzumo and in the Kiushiu legendary cycle. The legend of the birth of the Sun-Goddess and ​Moon-God from Izanagi’s eyes is a scarcely altered fragment of the Chinese myth of P‘an Ku; the superstition that peaches had assisted Izanagi to repel the hosts of Hades can almost certainly be traced to a Chinese source, and the hand-maidens of the Japanese Sun-Goddess are mentioned under the exact title of the Spinning Damsel of Chinese myth (天衣織女), while the River of Heaven (天河), which figures in the same legend, is equally Chinese,—for surely both names cannot be mere coincidences. A like remark applies to the name of the Deity of the Kitchen, and to the way in which that deity is mentioned. The art of making an intoxicating liquor is referred to in the very earliest Japanese legends. Are we to believe that its invention here was independent of its invention on the continent? In this instance moreover the old histories bear witness against themselves; for they mention this same liquor in terms showing that it was a curious rarity in what, according to the accepted chronology, corresponds to the century immediately preceding the Christian era, and again in the third century of that era. The whole story of the Sea-God’s palace has a Chinese ring about it, and the “cassia-tree” (桂) mentioned in it is certainly Chinese, as are the crocodiles. That the so-called maga-tama, or “curved jewels,” which figure so largely in the Japanese mythology, and with which the Early Japanese adorned themselves, were derived from China was already suspected by Mr. Henry von Siebold; and quite latterly Mr. Milne has thrown light on this subject from an altogether unexpected quarter. He has remarked, namely, that jade or the jade-like stone of which many of the maga-tama are made, is a mineral which has never yet been met with in Japan. We therefore know that some at least of the “curved jewels” or of the material for them came from the mainland, and the probability that the idea of carving these very oddly shaped ornaments was likewise imported thence gains in probability. The peculiar kind of arrow called nari-kabura (鳴鏑) is another trace of Chinese influence in the material order, and a thorough search by a competent Chinese scholar would perhaps reveal others. But enough at least has been said to show the indisputable existence of that influence. From other sources we know ​that the more recent mythic fancy of Japan has shown itself as little impenetrable to such influence as have the manners and customs of the people. The only difference is that assimilation has of late proceeded with much greater rapidity.
In this, language is another guide; for, though the discoverable traces of Chinese influence are comparatively few in the Archaic Dialect, yet they are there. This is a subject which has as yet scarcely been touched. Two Japanese authors of an elder generation, Kahibara and Arawi Hakuseki, did indeed point out the existence of some such traces. But they drew no inference from them, they did not set to work to discover new ones, and their indications, except in one or two obvious cases, have received little attention from later writers whether native or foreign. But when we compare such words as kane, kume, kuni, saka, tana, uma, and many others with the pronunciation now given, or with that which the phonetic laws of the language in its earlier stage would have caused to be given, to their Chinese equivalents 金, 軍, 郡, 尺, 壇, 馬, etc., the idea forces way that such coincidences of sound and sense cannot all be purely accidental; and when moreover we find that the great majority of the words in question denote things or ideas that were almost certainly imported, we perceive that a more thorough sifting of Archaic Japanese (especially of botanical and zoological names and of the names of implements and manufactures) would probably be the best means of discovering at least the negative features of an antiquity remoter than all written documents, remoter even than the crystallization of the legends which those documents have preserved. In dealing with Korean words found in Archaic Japanese we tread on more delicate ground; for there we have a language which, unlike Chinese, stands to Japanese in the closest family relationship, making it plain that many coincidences of sound and sense should be ascribed to radical affinity rather than to later intercourse. At the same time it appears more probable that, for instance, such seemingly indigenous Japanese terms as Hotoke, “Buddha,” and tera, “Buddhist temple,” should have been in fact borrowed from the corresponding Korean words Puchhö and chöl than that both nations should have independently chosen homonyms to denote the same foreign ideas. Indeed, it will perhaps not be too bold to assume that in the case of Hotoke, “Buddha,” ​we have before us a word whose journeyings consist of many stages, it having been first brought from India to China, then from China to Korea, and thirdly from Korea to Japan, where finally the ingenuity of philologists has discovered for it a Japanese etymology (hito ke, “human spirit”) with which in reality it has nothing whatever to do.
These introductory remarks have already extended to such a length that a reference to the strikingly parallel case of borrowed customs and ideas which is presented by the Ainos in this same archipelago must be left undeveloped. In conclusion, it need only be remarked that a simple translation of one book, such as is here given, does not nearly exhaust the work which might be expended even on the elucidation of that single book, and much less can it fill the gap which still lies between us and a proper knowledge of Japanese antiquity. To do this, the co-operation of the archæologist must be obtained, while even in the field of the critical investigation of documents there is an immense deal still to be done. Not only must all the available Japanese sources be made to yield up the information which they contain, but the assistance of Chinese and Korean records must be called in. A large quantity of Chinese literature has already been ransacked for a similar purpose by Matsushita Ken-rin, a translation of part of whose very useful compilation entitled “An Exposition of the Foreign Notices of Japan” (異稱日本傳) would be one of the greatest helps towards the desired knowledge. In fact there still remains to be done for Japanese antiquity from our standpoint what Hirata has done for it from the standpoint of a Japanese Shintoist. Except in some of Mr. Satow’s papers published in these “Transactions,” the subject has scarcely yet been studied in this spirit, and it is possible that the Japanese members of our Society may be somewhat alarmed at the idea of their national history being treated with so little reverence. Perhaps, however, the discovery of the interest of the field of study thus only waiting to be investigated may reconcile them to the view here propounded. In any case if the early history of Japan is not all true, no amount of make-believe can make it so. What we would like to do is to sift the true from the false. As an eminent writer on anthropology has recently ​said, “Historical criticism, that is, judgment, is practised not for the purpose of disbelieving, but of believing. Its object is not to find fault with the author, but to ascertain how much of what he says may be reasonably taken as true.” Moreover, even in what is not to be accepted as historic fact there is often much that is valuable from other points of view. If, therefore, we lose a thousand years of so-called Japanese history, it must not be forgotten that Japanese mythology remains as the oldest existing product of the Altaïc mind. ************ The following is a list of all the Japanese works quoted in this Introduction and in the Notes to the Translation. For the sake of convenience to the English reader all the titles have been translated excepting some few which, mostly on account of their embodying a recondite allusion, do not admit of translation:—
* Catalogue of Family Names, 姓氏錄, by Prince Mata.
* Chronicles of Japan (generally quoted as the “Chronicles,”) 日本紀 or 日本書紀, by Prince Toneri and others.
* Chronicles of Japan Continued, 續日本紀, by Sugano Ason Mamichi, Fujihara no Ason Tsugunaha and others.
* Chronicles of Japan Explained, 釋日本記, by Urabe no Yasukata.
* Chronicles of the Old Matters of Former Ages, 先代舊事記, authorship uncertain.
* Collection of a Myriad Leaves, 萬葉集, by Tachibana no Moroye (probably).
* Collection of Japanese Songs Ancient and Modern, 古今和歌集, by Ki no Tsurayuki and others.
* Commentary on the Collection of a Myriad Leaves, 萬葉考, by Kamo no Mabuchi. ​
* Commentary on the Lyric Dramas, 謠曲拾葉集, by Jin-kō.
* Commentary on the Ritual of the General Purification, 大秡詞後釋, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Correct Account of the Divine Age, 神代正語, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Dictionary of the Pillow-Words, 冠辞考, by Kamo no Mabuchi.
* Digest of the Imperial Genealogies, 纂輯御系圖, by Yokoyama Yoshikiyo and Kurokaha Saneyori.
* Discussion of the Objections to the Inquiry into the True Chronology, 眞暦不審考, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Examination of Difficult Words, 難語考, by Tachibana no Moribe.
* Examination of the Synonyms for Japan, 國號考, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Explanation of Japanese Names, 日本譯名, by Kahibara Tokushin.
* Explanation of the Songs in the Chronicles of Japan, 日本紀歌廼解, by Arakida no Hisaoi.
* Exposition of the Ancient Histories, 古史傳, by Hirata Atsutane.
* Exposition of the Foreign Notices of Japan, 異稱日本傳, by Matsushita Ken-rin.
* Exposition of the Record of Ancient Matters (usually quoted simply at “Motowori’s Commentary”), 古事記傳, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Exposition of the Records of Ancient Matters Criticized (usually quoted as “Moribe’s Critique on Motowori’s Commentary,”) 難古事記傳, by Tachibana no Moribe.
* Gleanings form Ancient Story, 古語拾遺, by Imibe no Hironari.
* Idzu no Chi-Waki, 稜威道別, by Tachibana no Moribe.
* Idzu no Koto-waki, 稜威言別, by Tachibana no Moribe.do.
* Inquiry into the Significance of the Names of All the Provinces (MS.), 諸國名義考, by Fujihara no Hitomaro.
* Inquiry into the True Chronology, 眞暦考, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Japanese Words Classified and Explained, 和名類聚鈔, by Minamoto no Shitagafu.
* Ko-Shi Tsū, 古史通, by Arawi Kumbi Hakuseki.
* Kō-Gan Shō, (MS.), 厚顔抄, by Kei-chiyu. ​
* Perpetual Commentary on the Chronicles of Japan (usually quoted as “Tanigaha Shisei’s Commentary,”) 日本書記通證, by Tanigaha Shisei.
* Records of Ancient Matters (often quoted simply as the “Records”), 古事記, by Futo no Yasumaro.
* Records of Ancient Matters in the Divine Character, 神字古事記, by Fujihara no Masaoki.
* Records of Ancient Matters in the Syllabic Character, 假名古事記, by Sakata no Kaneyasu.
* Records of Ancient Matters Revised, 校正古事記, Anonymous.
* Records of Ancient Matters With Marginal Notes (usually quoted as “the Edition of 1687”), 鼇頭古事記, by Deguchi Nobuyoshi.
* Records of Ancient Matters With the Ancient Reading, 古訓古事記, by Nagase no Masachi (published with Motowori’s sanction).
* Records of Ancient Matters with Marginal Readings, 標註古事記, by Murakami Tadayoshi.
* Ritual of the General Purification, 犬祓詞, Authorship Uncertain.
* Shintō Discussed Afresh, 神道新論, by Takahashi Gorō.
* Sources of the Ancient Histories, 古史徴, by Hirata Atsutane.
* Tale of a Bamboo-Cutter, 竹取物語, Authorship Uncertain.
* Tama-Katsuma, 玉勝間, by Motowori Norinaga.
* Tokiha-Gusa (the full title is Jin-Dai Sei-Go Tokiha-Gusa,) 常盤草 (神代正語常盤草), Hosoda Tominobu.
* Topography of Yamashiro, 山城風土紀, Authorship Uncertain.
* Tō-Ga (MS.), 東雅, by Arawi Kumbi Hakuseki.
* Wa-Kun Shiwori, 和訓栞, by Tanigaha Shisei.
* Yamato Tales, 大和物語, Authorship Uncertain.
Besides these, two or three standard Chinese works are referred to, such as the “Yi Ching” or “Book of Changes” (昜經) and the “Shan Hai Ching” or “Mountain and Sea Classic” (山海經); but they are very few, and so easily recognized that it were unnecessary to enumerate them. All Japanese words properly so called are transliterated according to Mr. Satow’s “Orthographic System,” which, while representing the native spelling, does not in their case differ very greatly from the modern pronunciation. In the case of Sinico-Japanese words, where the divergence between the “Orthographic” spelling and the ​pronunciation is often considerable, a phonetic spelling has been preferred. With but two or three exceptions, which have been specially noted, Sinico-Japanese words are found only in proper names mentioned in the Preface and in the translator’s Introduction, Foot-notes, and Sectional Headings. The few Chinese words that occur in the Introduction and Notes are transliterated according to the method introduced by Sir Thomas Wade, and now so widely used by students of Chinese.
* ↑ Should the claim of Accadian to be considered an Altaïc language be substantiated, then Archaic Japanese will have to be content with the second place in the Altaïc family. Taking the word Altaïc in its usual acceptation, viz., as the generic name of all the languages belonging to the Mantchu, Mongolian, Turkish and Finnish groups, not only the Archaic, but the Classical, literature of Japan carries us back several centuries beyond the earliest extant documents of any other Altaïc tongue.—For a discussion of the age of the most ancient Tamil documents see the Introduction to Bishop Caldwell’s “Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages,” p. 91 et seq.
* ↑ Published in Vol. iii, Pt. I, of these “Transactions.”
* ↑ I.e., the Emperor Tem-mu.
* ↑ I.e., “Records of Ancient Matters.” The alternative reading, which is probably but an invention of Motowori’s, gives the same meaning in pure Japanese (instead of Sinico-Japanese) sounds.
* ↑ Unfortunately the portion already printed does not carry the history down even to the close of the “Divine Age.” The work is as colossal in extent as it is minute in research, forty-one volumes (including the eleven forming the “Sources”) having already appeared. The “Idzu no Chi-Waki” and “Idzu no Koto-Waki” are still similarly incomplete.
* ↑ The translator adopts the term “ideographic,” because it is that commonly used and understood, and because this is not the place to demonstrate its inappropriateness. Strictly speaking, “logographic” would be preferable to “ideographic,” the difference between Chinese characters and alphabetic writing being that the former represent in their entirety the Chinese words for things and ideas, whereas the latter dissects into their component sounds the words of the languages which it is employed to write.
* ↑ “Grammar of the Japanese Written Language,” Second Edition, Appendix II., p. VI.
* ↑ For a special account of the Pillow-Words, etc., see a paper by the present writer in Vol. V, Pt. I, pp. 79 et seq. of these “Transactions,” and for a briefer notice, his “Classical Poetry of the Japanese,” pp. 5 and 6.
* ↑ The practice of bestowing a canonical name (okurina 謚) on an emperor after his decease dates from the latter part of the eighth century of our era when, at the command of the emperor Kuwam-mu, a scholar named Mifune-no-Mahito selected suitable “canonical names” for all the previous sovereigns, from Jim-mu down to Kuwam-mu’s immediate predecessor. From that time forward every emperor has received his “canonical name” soon after death, and it is generally by it alone that he is known to history.
* ↑ See Sect. IV. of this Introduction and Sect. XIV. Note 5 of the Translation.
* ↑ Conf. Section LVI. Note 7.
* ↑ See the legend in Sect. XXIII.
* ↑ 易經.
* ↑ 禮記.
* ↑ See Sects. XXI. XXVII. and XXIII.
* ↑ Rendered in the English translation by “the Male-Who-Invites.”
* ↑ Yomu tsu Hira-Saka.
* ↑ 書經.
* ↑ Details as to the adoption by the Japanese of the Chinese system of computing time will be found in the late Mr. Bramsen’s “Japanese Chronological Tables,” where that lamented scholar brands “the whole system of fictitious dates applied in the first histories of Japan,” as “one of the greatest literary frauds ever perpetrated, from which we may infer how little trust can be placed in the early Japanese historical works.” See also Motowori’s “Inquiry into the True Chronology,” pp. 33–36, and his second work on the same subject entitled “Discussion of the Objections to the Inquiry into the True Chronology,” pp. 46 et seq.
* ↑ “Confucian Analects,” Book VII. Chap. I. Dr. Legge’s translation.
* ↑ It may perhaps be worth while to quote this legend in full. It is as follows: “One account says that the Heaven-Shining Great Deity, being in Heaven, said: ‘I hear that in the Central Land of Reed-Plains (i.e. Japan) there is a Food-Possessing Deity. Do thou, Thine Augustness Moon-Night-Possessor, go and see.’ His Augustness the Moon-Night Possessor, having received these orders, descended [to earth], and arrived at the place where the Food-Possessing Deity was. The Food-Possessing Deity forthwith, on turning her head towards the land, produced rice from her mouth; again, on turning to the sea, she also produced from her mouth things broad of fin and things narrow of fin; again, on turning to the mountains, she also produced from her mouth things rough of hair and things soft of hair. Having collected together all these things, she offered them [to the Moon-God] as a feast on a hundred tables. At this time His Augustness the Moon-Night-Possessor, being angry and colouring up, said: ‘How filthy! how vulgar! What! shalt thou dare to feed me with things spat out from thy mouth?’ [and with these words,] he drew his sabre and slew her. Afterwards he made his report [to the Sun-Goddess]. When he told her all the particulars, the Heaven-Shining Great Deity was very angry, and said: ‘Thou art a wicked Deity, whom it is not right for me to see;’—and forthwith she and His Augustness the Moon-Night-Possessor dwelt separately day and night.” The partly parallel legend given in these “Records” forms the subject of Sect. XVII of the Translation.
* ↑ Compare Mr. Satow’s remarks on this subject in Vol. III, Pt. I, pp. 21–23 of these “Transactions.”
* ↑ A curious scrap of the history of Japanese civilization is preserved in the word kaji, whose exclusive acceptation in the modern tongue is “rudder.” In archaic Japanese it meant “oar,” a signification which is now expressed by the term ro, which has been borrowed from the Chinese. It is a matter of debate whether the ancient Japanese boats possessed such an appliance as a rudder, and the word tagishi or taishi has been credited with that meaning. The more likely opinion seems to be that both the thing and the word were specialized in later times, the early Japanese boatmen having made any oar do duty for a rudder when circumstances necessitated the use of one.
* ↑ See the end of Sect. XXXII.
* ↑ See Vol. IX, Pt. II, pp. 191–192, of these “Transactions.”
* ↑ “Yamato Mono-gatari.”
* ↑ For a translation of this story see the present writer’s “Classical Poetry of the Japanese”, pp. 42–44.
* ↑ See Sect. XLIV, Note 12 and Sect. LXXII, Note 29.
* ↑ Mr. Ernest Satow, who in 1878 visited the island of Hachijō, gives the following details concerning the observance down to modern times in that remote corner of the Japanese Empire of the custom mentioned in the text: “In Hachijō women, when about to become mothers, were formerly driven out to the huts on the mountain-side, and according to the accounts of native writers, left to shift for themselves, the result not unfrequently being the death of the newborn infant, or if it survived the rude circumstances under which it first saw the light, the seeds of disease were sown which clung to it throughout its after life. The rule of non-intercourse was so strictly enforced, that the woman was not allowed to leave the hut even to visit her own parents at the point of death, and besides the injurious effects that this solitary confinement must have had on the wives themselves, their prolonged absence was a serious loss to households, where there were elder children and large establishments to be superintended. The rigour of the custom was so far relaxed in modern times, that the huts were no longer built on the hills, but were constructed inside the homestead. It was a subject of wonder to people from other parts of Japan that the senseless practice should still be kept up, and its abolition was often recommended, but the administration of the Shôguns was not animated by a reforming spirit, and it remained for the Government of the Mikado to exhort the islanders to abandon this and the previously mentioned custom. They are therefore no longer sanctiond by official authority and the force of social opinion against them is increasing, so that before long these relics of ancient ceremonial religion will in all probability have disappeared from the group of islands.” (Trans. of the Asiat. Soc. of Japan, Vol. VI, Pt. III, pp. 455–6.)
* ↑ See Sect. LXX, Note 6. The Japanese term is ina-ki, ki being an Archaic term for “castle.”
* ↑ See Sect. XVI. Mention of cave-dwellers will also be found in Sects. XLVIII, and LXXX.
* ↑ See the latter part of Sect. XVII.
* ↑ See Sect. XVIII, Note 16.
* ↑ 山海經.
* ↑ See, however, the legend in Sect. LXV.
* ↑ See beginning of Sect. XXVII.
* ↑ For details on this subject and illustrations, see Mr. Henry von Siebold’s “Notes on Japanese Archæology,” p. 15 and Table XI, and a paper by Professor Milne on the “Stone Age in Japan,” read before the Anthropological Society of Great Britain on the 25th May, 1880, pp. 10 and 11.
* ↑ The tradition preserved in Sect. CXXIV, shows that in times almost, if nut quite, historical (the 4th century of our era) the silkworm was a curious novelty, apparently imported from Korea. It is not only possible, but probable, that silken fabrics were occasionally imported into Japan from the mainland at an earlier period, which would account for the mention of “silk rugs” in Sects XL and LXXXIV.
* ↑ The (necessarily somewhat arbitrary) line between earlier and later times has been drawn at the epoch of the traditional conquest of Korea by the Empress Jin-gō at the commencement of the third century of our era, it being then, accordding to the received opinions, that the Japanese first came in contact with their continental neighbours, and began to borrow from them. (See however the concluding Section of this Introduction for a demonstration of the untrustworthiness of all the so-called history of Japan down to the commencement of the fifth century of the Christian era.)
* ↑ See Sect. XXIV, Note 4.
* ↑ Mr. Satow, in his translation of a passage of the “Records of Ancient Matters” forming part of a note to his third paper on the “Rituals” in Vol. IX, Pt. II of these “Transactions”, renders wani by “shark.” There is perhaps some want of clearness in the old historical books in the details concerning the creature in question, and its fin is mentioned in the “Chronicles.” But the accounts point rather to an amphibious creature, conceived of as being somewhat similar to the serpent, than to a fish, and the Chinese descriptions quoted by the Japanese commentators unmistakably refer to the crocodile. The translator therefore sees no sufficient reason for abandoning the usually accepted interpretation of wani (鰐) as “crocodile.” It should be noticed that the wani is never introduced into any but patently fabulous stories, and that the example of other nations, and indeed of Japan itself, shows that myth-makers have no objection to embellish their tales by the mention of wonders supposed to exist in foreign lands.
* ↑ Sect. CXXVIII preserves a very early ornithological observation in the shape of the Songs composed by the Emperor Nin-toku and his Minister Take-Uchi on the subject of a wild-goose laying eggs in Central Japan. These birds are not known to breed even so far South as the island of Yezo.
* ↑ See the legend in Sect. LXXIV.
* ↑ Mr. Satow suggests that awo (“blue” or “green”) means properly any colour derived from the awi plant (Polygonum tinctorium).
* ↑ Only the foot-notes of the original are omitted, as not being essential.
* ↑ See the story of Prince Karu, which is probably historical, in Sects. CXLI et seq.
* ↑ The custom of using surnames was certainly borrowed from China, although the Japanese, have not, like the Koreans, gone so far as to adopt the actual surnames in use in that country. The “gentile names” may have sprung up more naturally, though they too show traces of Chinese influence. Those most frequently met with are Agata-nushi, Ason, Atahe, Kimi, Miyatsuko, Murazhi, Omi, Sukune, and Wake. See above, pp. xv–xvi.
* ↑ See Sect. XXV. (the second Song in that Section).
* ↑ See Sect. LXXI, Note 12.
* ↑ See Sect. XLII.
* ↑ Representations of these clay images (tsuchi-nin-giyō) will be found in Table XII of Mr. Henry von Siebold’s “Notes on Japanese Archæology,” and in Mr. Satow’s paper on “Ancient Sepulchral Mounds in Kaudzuke” published in Vol. VII, Pt. III, pp. 313 et seq. of these “Transactions.”
* ↑ See Sect. LXXXVII.
* ↑ See Sect. XCVII.
* ↑ A translation,—especially a literal prose translation,—is not calculated to show off to best advantage the poetry of an alien race. But even subject to this drawback, the present writer would be surprised if it were not granted that poetic fire and grace are displayed in some of the Love-Songs (for instance the third Song in Sect. XXIV and both Songs in Sect. XXV). and a quaint pathos in certain others (for instance in Yamato-Take’s address to his “elder brother the pine-tree,” and in his Death-Songs contained in Sect. LXXXIX).
* ↑ 論語 and 千字文.
* ↑ Viz. of the Chinese 文 and 筆 (in the modern Mandarin pronunciation wên and pi). Mr. Aston would seem to derive both the Japanese term fude and the Korean put independently from the Chinese 筆. The present writer thinks it more likely that the Japanese fude was borrowed mediately through the Korean put. In any case, as it regularly corresponds with the latter according to the laws of letter-change subsisting between the two languages, it will be observed that the Japanese term would still have to be considered borrowed, even if the derivation of put from 筆 had to be abandoned; for we can hardly suppose Korean and Japanese to have independently selected the same root to denote such a thing as a “pen.” As to the correctness of the derivation of fumi from 文 there can be little doubt, and it had long ago struck even the Japanese themselves, who are not prompt to acknowledge such loans. They usually derive fude from fumi-te, “document hand,” and thus again we are brought back to the Chinese 文 as the origin of the Japanese word for “pen.”
* ↑ The Chinese characters used to write this word are 神道, which signify the “Way of the Gods.” The term was adopted in order to distinguish the old native beliefs from Buddhism and Confucianism.
* ↑ Conf. p. xvii, last paragraph for the modified sense in which alone the word “deification” can be used in speaking of the Early Japanese worship.
* ↑ In Sect. XXVII, where this deity is first mentioned, he is called Sukuna-Biko-Na-no-Kami, the “Little Prince the Renowned Deity.”
* ↑ See Appendix II.
* ↑ 新羅.
* ↑ As a specimen of the flexibility of his system, the reader to whom the Japanese language and Japanese legend are familiar is recommended to peruse pp. 13–21 of vol. I of Arawi Hakuseki’s “Ko Shi Tsū” (古史通), where an elaborate rationalistic interpretation is applied to the story of the amours of Izanagi and Izanami. It is amusing in its very gravity, and one finds it difficult to believe that the writer can have been in earnest when he penned it.
* ↑ Mr. Takahashi Gorō’s book here alluded to is his “Shintō Discussed Afresh.”
* ↑ I. e. the emperor Jim-mu,—ten-nō, written 天皇, being simply the Sinico-Japanese word for “emperor.”
* ↑ 15th day of 11th moon of 5th year of Meiji.
* ↑ For the use of this word to represent the Japanese Yomo or Yomi, see Sect. IX., Note 1.
* ↑ Podocarpus macrophylla.
* ↑ The least meagre account will be found in Sects. XVI. and XXXII.
* ↑ To be found at the end of Sect. XXXII.
* ↑ In the Jim-mu legend we have the more usual form of the superstition, that, viz., which makes it unlucky to go from West to East, which is the contrary of the course pursued by the sun. In Sect. CLIII, on the other hand, the Emperor Yū-riaku is found fault with for acting in precisely the reverse manner, viz., for going from East to West, i.e. with his back to the sun. The idea is the same, though its practical application may thus diametrically differ, the fundamental objection being to going against the sun, in whatever manner the word against, or some kindred expression, may be interpreted.
* ↑ See Sects. XXXIX to XLI. For the “Herb-Quelling Sabre” see Sects. XVIII and LXXXII, et. seq.
* ↑ General Le Gendre, quoted by Sir Edward Reed.
* ↑ 山海經.
* ↑ I.e. the High August Producing Wondrous Deity. He is the second divine personage whose birth is mentioned in the “Records” (see Sect. I Note 5). In the story of the creation given in the “Chronicles” he does not appear except in “One account.”
* ↑ Sect. XXXVII is a good instance of the third of these categories. For an elaborate myth founded on the name of a place see Sect. LXV. Lesser instances occur in Sects. XLIV, LXV, and LXXIII.
* ↑ See Sects. LXXIX–XCI.
* ↑ See this legend as first given in Sects. XL and XLI. and afterwards in quite another context in Sect. CXVI. The way in which “One account” of the “Chronicles of Japan” tells the story of the ravages committed on the fields of the Sun-Goddess by her brother, the “Impetuous Male Deity,” might perhaps justify the opinion that that likewise is but the same tale in another form. The legend is evidently a very important one.
* ↑ The translator’s attention was drawn to the inconsistency of these dates by Mr. Ernest Satow.
* ↑ See Sect. XXIX, Note 16.
* ↑ Dr. Tylor in his “Anthropology,” Chap. XV.
* ↑ The names in small capitals are those by which the authors (or compilers) are best known, and are mostly either their surname or personal name. Japanese usage is however very fluctuating, and sanctions moreover the use of a variety of noms de plume. Thus Motowori is not only often mentioned by his personal name Norinaga, but also by the designation of Suzunoya no Ushi, Mabuchi by the designation of Agatawi no Ushi, etc.