Chapter XIII: ) As in one of the early Sumerian texts, the mysterious

plant, impregnated with preserving and perpetuating “life substance”, was the second product of Creation.

Izanagi and Izanami were told by the elder deities that they must “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land”. They were then given the Ame no tama-boko, the “Celestial Jewel-spear”. It is suggested that the spear is a phallic symbol. The jewel (tama) is “life substance”. Izanagi and Izanami stood on “the floating bridge of heaven”, which Aston identifies with the rainbow, or, as some Japanese scholars put it, the “Heavenly Rock Boat”, or “Heavenly Stairs”, and pushed down the tama-boko and groped with it until they found the ocean. According to the Ko-ji-ki, they “stirred the brine until it went curdle-curdle (koworo-koworo)”, that is, as Chamberlain suggests, “thick and glutinous”. Others think the passage should be translated so as to indicate that the brine gave forth “a curdling sound”. When the primæval waters and the oily mud began to “curdle” or “cook”, the deities drew up the spear. Some of the cosmic “porridge” dropped from the point and formed an island, which was named Onogoro (“self-curdling”, or “self-condensed”). The deities descended from heaven and erected on the island an eight-fathom house [579] with a central pillar. Here we meet with the aniconic pillar, the “herm” of Kamschatkan religion, the pillar of the Vedic world-house erected by the Aryo-Indian god Indra, the “branstock” of Scandinavian religion, the pillar of the “Lion Gate” of Mycenæ; the “pillar” is the “world spine”, like the Indian Mount Meru. [580] “The central pillar of a house (corresponding to our king-post) is,” writes Dr. Aston, “at the present day, an object of honour in Japan as in many other countries. In the case of Shinto shrines, it is called Nakago no mibashira (‘central august pillar’), and in ordinary houses the Daikoku-bashira.” [581]

Izanagi and Izanami become man and wife by performing the ceremony of going round the pillar and meeting one another face to face. Their first-born is Hiruko (leech-child). At the age of three he was still unable to stand upright, and was in consequence placed in a reed boat and set adrift on the ocean.

Here we have what appears to be a version of the Moses story. The Indian Karna, who is similarly set adrift, was a son of Surya, god of the sun. The Egyptian Horus was concealed after birth on a floating island, and he was originally a solar deity with a star form. [582] Ra, the Egyptian sun-god, drifted across the heavens on reed floats before he was given a boat. Osiris was, after death, set adrift in a chest. When the Egyptians paid more attention to the constellations than they did in the early period of their history, they placed in the constellation of Argo the god Osiris in a chest or boat. In the Greek period Canopus, the chief star of the constellation of Argo, is the child Horus in his boat. Horus was a reincarnation of Osiris. The Babylonian Ea originally came to Eridu in a boat, which became transformed into a fish-man. As the sign for a god was a star, Ea was apparently supposed to have come from one. Lockyer refers to Egyptian and Babylonian temples, which were “oriented to Canopus”. [583] Sun-gods were the offspring of the mother-star, or their own souls were stars by night. “Hiruko,” says Aston, “is in reality simply a masculine form of Hirume, the sun female.” [584] The sun and moon had not, however, come into existence when he was set adrift, and it may be that as the “leech-child” he was a star. He became identified in time with Ebisu (or Yebisu), god of fishermen, and one of the gods of luck.

Izanagi and Izanami had subsequently as children the eight islands of Japan, and although other islands came into existence later, Japan was called “Land-of-the-Eight-great-Islands” (Oho-ya-shima-kuni). “When,” continues the Ko-ji-ki, “they (Izanagi and Izanami) had finished giving birth to countries they began afresh, giving birth to deities (kami).” These included “Heavenly-Blowing Male”, “Youth of the Wind”, the sea-kami, “Great-Ocean-Possessor”, “Foam Calm”, “Foam Waves”, “Heavenly-Water-Divider”, or “Water-Distributor” (Ame-no-mi-kumari-no-kami), and the deities of mountains, passes, and valleys.

According to the Nihon-gi, the gods of the sea to whom Izanagi and Izanami gave birth are called Watatsumi, which means “sea children”, or, as Florenz translates it, “Lords of the Sea”. Wata, so like our “water”, is “an old word for sea”. It is probable that, as De Visser says, “the old Japanese sea-gods were snakes or dragons”. [585]

In the Ko-ji-ki two groups of eight deities are followed by “the Deity Bird’s-Rock-Camphor-Tree-Boat”, another name for this kami being “Heavenly Bird-Boat”. Then came the food-goddess, “Deity Princess-of-Great-Food”. She was followed by the fire-god, kagu-tsuchi. This deity caused the death of his mother Izanami, having burned her at birth so severely that she sickened and “lay down”. Before she died, an interesting group of deities, making a total of eight from “Heavenly Bird-Boat” to the last named, “Luxuriant Food Princess”, came into being. From her vomit sprang “Metal-Mountain Prince” and “Metal-Mountain Princess”; from her fæces came “Clay Prince” and “Clay Princess” (earth deities); and from her urine crept forth Mitsu-ha no-Me, which Japanese commentators explain as “Female-Water-snake”, or “The Woman who produces the Water”. In the first rendering ha is regarded as meaning “snake” (dragon), and in the second as “to produce”. Neither Florenz nor De Visser can decide which explanation is correct. [586] The dragon was, of course, a water-producer, or water-controller, or a “water-confiner”, who was forced to release the waters, like the “drought demon”, slain by the Aryo-Indian god Indra, and the water-confiner of the Nile, whose blood reddened the river during inundation.

When Izanami died, the heart of Izanagi was filled with wrath and grief. Drawing his big sabre, he, according to the Ko-ji-ki, cut off the head of the fire-god; or, as the Nihon-gi tells, cut him into three pieces, each of which became a god. Other gods sprang from the pieces, from the blood drops that bespattered the rocks, the blood that clung to the upper part of the sabre, and the blood that leaked out between the fingers of Izanagi.

According to the Nihon-gi, the blood dripping from the upper part of the sword became the gods Kura-okami, Kura-yama-tsumi, and Kura-mitsu-ha. The meaning of the character kura is “dark”, and Professor Florenz explains it as “abyss, valley, cleft”, [587] and notes that okami means “rain” and “dragon”. According to De Visser, Kura-okami is a dragon- or snake-god who controls rain and snow, and had Shinto temples “in all provinces”. Another reading in the Nihon-gi states that one of the three gods who came into being from the pieces of the fire-god’s body was Taka-okami, a name which, according to a Japanese commentator, means “the dragon-god residing on the mountains”, while Kura-okami means “the dragon-god of the valleys”. [588] The second god born from the blood drops from the upper part of the sword, Kura-yama-tsumi, is translated “Lord of the Dark Mountains”, and “Mountain-snake”; and the third, Kura-mitsu-ha, is “Dark-water-snake” or “Valley-water-snake”. According to the Ko-ji-ki, the deities Kura-okami and Kura-mitsu-ha came from the blood that leaked out between Izanagi’s fingers.

It is of interest to note here that other dragon deities to which Izanagi and Izanami gave origin, included the mizuchi or “water fathers”, which are referred to as “horned deities”, “four-legged dragons”, or “large water-snakes”. As Aston notes, [589] these “water fathers” had no individual names; they were prayed to for rain in times of drought. Another sea-dragon child of the great couple was the wani, which appears to have been a combination of crocodile and shark. Aston thinks that wani is a Korean word. De Visser, on the other hand, is of opinion that the wani is the old Japanese dragon-god or sea-god, and that the legend about the Abundant Pearl Princess (Toyo-tama-bime) [590] who had a human lover and, like Melusina, transformed herself from human shape into that of a wani (Ko-ji-ki) or a dragon (Nihon-gi), was originally a Japanese serpent-dragon, which was “dressed in Indian garb by later generations”. [591] Florenz, the German Orientalist, thinks the legend is of Chinese origin, but a similar one is found in Indonesia. “Wani,” De Visser says, “may be an Indonesian word,” and it is possible, as he suggests, that “foreign invaders, who in prehistoric times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia and brought the myth with them.” [592]

There is a reference in the Nihon-gi (Chapter I) to a “bear-wani, eight fathoms long”, and it has been suggested that “bear” means here nothing more than “strong”. [593] The Ainu, however, as we have seen (Chapter XVII), associated bear and dragon deities; the bear-goddess was the wife of the dragon-god, and that goddess had, like the Abundant Pearl Princess, a human lover. “Bear-wani” may therefore have been a bear-dragon. There was a dragon-horse “with a long neck and wings at its sides”, which flew through the air, and did not sink when it trod upon the water, [594] and there were withal Japanese crow-dragons, toad-dragons, fish-dragons, and lizard-dragons.

The horse played as prominent a part in Japanese rain-getting and rain-stopping ceremonies as did the bear among the Ainu. White, black, or red horses were offered to bring rain, but red horses alone were sacrificed to stop rain. Like the Buriats of Siberia and the Aryo-Indians of the Vedic period, the Japanese made use of the domesticated horse at the dawn of their history. No doubt it was imported from Korea. There is evidence that at an early period human beings were sacrificed to the Japanese dragon-gods of rivers, lakes, and pools. Human sacrifices at tombs are also referred to. In the Nihon-gi, under the legendary date 2 B.C., it is related that when a Mikado died his personal attendants were buried alive in an upright position beside his tomb. [595]

In his notable work on the dragon, M. W. de Visser [596] shows that the Chinese ideas regarding their four-legged dragon and Indian Buddhist ideas regarding nagas were introduced into Japan and fused with local ideas regarding serpent-shaped water-gods. The foreign elements added to ancient Japanese legends have, as has been indicated, made their original form obscure. In the dragon place-names of Japan, however, it is still possible to trace the locations of the ancient Shinto gods who were mostly serpent-shaped. An ancient name for a Japanese dragon is Tatsu. De Visser notes that Tatsu no Kuchi (“Dragon’s mouth”) is a common place-name. It is given to a hot spring in the Nomi district, to a waterfall in Kojimachi district, to a hill in Kamakura district, where criminals were put to death, and to mountains, &c., elsewhere. Tatsu ga hana (“Dragon’s nose”) is in Taga district; Tatsukushi (“Dragon’s skewer”) is a rock in Tosa province; and so on. Chinese and Indian dragons are in Japanese place-names “ryu” or “ryo”. These include Ryo-ga-mine (“Dragon’s peak”) in Higo; Ryu-ga-take (“Dragon’s peak”) in Ise; Ryu-kan-gawa (“Dragon’s rest river”) in Tokyo, &c.

The worship of the Water Fathers or Dragons in Japan was necessary so as to ensure the food-supply.