Shinto: The Way of the GodsShintoScholarly ReconstructionEnglish study drawing on Japanese sourcesShareShinto: The Way of the Gods 13Aston - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableAstonLanguageEnglishEspañol‹Shinto: The Way of the Gods 1Shinto: The Way of the Gods 2Shinto: The Way of the Gods 3Shinto: The Way of the Gods 4Shinto: The Way of the Gods 5Shinto: The Way of the Gods 6Shinto: The Way of the Gods 7Shinto: The Way of the Gods 8Shinto: The Way of the Gods 9Shinto: The Way of the Gods 10Shinto: The Way of the Gods 11Shinto: The Way of the Gods 12Shinto: The Way of the Gods 13Shinto: The Way of the Gods 14Shinto: The Way of the Gods 15Shinto: The Way of the Gods 16Shinto: The Way of the Gods 17Shinto: The Way of the Gods 18Shinto: The Way of the Gods 19Shinto: The Way of the Gods 20Shinto: The Way of the Gods 21Shinto: The Way of the Gods 22Shinto: The Way of the Gods 23Shinto: The Way of the Gods 24Shinto: The Way of the Gods 25Shinto: The Way of the Gods 26Shinto: The Way of the Gods 27Shinto: The Way of the Gods 28Shinto: The Way of the Gods 29Shinto: The Way of the Gods 30Shinto: The Way of the Gods 31›Gods Of Abstractions.Shinto: The Way of the Gods 13ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1=Izanagi and Izanami=.--The conspicuous position given by the mythical narrative[142] to these personifications of the dual creative powers of the universe has little to correspond with it in cult and ritual. Although they are no doubt to be reckoned among the Dii majores of Japan, they occupy a much lower place than the Sun-Goddess and the Food-Goddess. 2Izanagi and Izanami are evidently creations of subsequent date to the Sun-Goddess and other concrete deities, for whose existence they were intended to account. I have little doubt that they were suggested by the Yin and Yang,[143] or female and male principles of Chinese philosophy. Indeed there is a passage in the Nihongi in which these terms are actually applied to them. It may be said, and Motoöri does say, that the Yin and Yang are foreign ideas which have found their way into a purely native myth. We must remember, however, that the Japanese myths as we have them date from a period three centuries after the introduction of Chinese learning into Japan, and that there was communication with China hundreds of years earlier still. It would, therefore, not be strange if some knowledge of the fundamental principle of Chinese philosophy and science had reached the Japanese long before the Kojiki and Nihongi were written. 3I conjecture that the early part of the Nihongi, taken in the order of the original composition of the myths which it comprises, would be somewhat as follows:--First the Sun-myth, which is the nucleus of all, next that of the creation by Izanagi and Izanami, then the more abstract Musubi and a number of ill-defined creations of some idle fancy which precede him. Last of all was composed the philosophic proem with which the book opens. 4Izanagi and Izanami belong to that stage of religious progress in which the conception has been reached of powerful sentient beings separate from external nature. Untrue in itself, it has served a useful purpose. It is obviously easier for nations with little scientific knowledge to conceive of the same being as a ruler or parent of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, with all its human concerns, than to recognize in these phenomena a harmonious living whole. The common parentage of Izanagi and Izanami formed a link of union between the different aspects of nature which did not previously exist, and thus was in so far a step towards monotheism. 5The manner of creation is variously represented. In no case is anything made out of nothing. The first act of creation was the formation of an island out of the drippings of the brine of the chaos-ocean from a spear. The other parts of Japan and many of the deities were 6Izanagi and Izanami are elsewhere described as "putting in order and fully consolidating" the floating land beneath. This is precisely what Ohonamochi is represented as doing several generations of Gods later. Deities were also produced from Izanagi's clothing and staff which he threw down on his flight from Yomi, and from his eyes and nose when he washed in the sea to remove the impurity contracted by his visit thither. The Wind-God was his breath and the Gods of Water and Clay were formed of the urine and fœces of Izanami when she was about to die. These ideas, though not quite identical with, are closely related to the legends of other countries which describe the creation of the universe from the fragments of a fabulous anthropomorphic being. The Chinese myth of P'anku has been already quoted.[144] Norse story tells how "the vast frame of the world-giant Hymi was completely cut up by the sons of Bor, with Woden at their head. From Hymi's flesh they made the earth, from his bones the mountains, from his skull the heavens, from his blood the sea."[145] 7There is nothing spiritual about these two deities. All their actions are modelled not on those of ghosts, but on those of living men. Even when Izanami dies and goes down to the land of Yomi, she does not become a ghost, but a putrefying corpse. 8A Japanese writer[146] says: "In the beginning of all sentient things we have two Supreme Beings, Izanagi and Izanami." Even if we admit the possible existence of two Supreme Beings, Izanagi and Izanami hardly realize our conception of the Supreme. They acted by command of other pre-existing deities, and their creation is limited. It does not include all the Gods, and, as is only natural, is confined to Japan. The creation of mankind is nowhere accounted for in Japanese myth. There is, however, a modicum of truth in this writer's statement. Though not the first sentient beings, Izanagi and Izanami are the first who stand out with any distinct characterization, and, although not supreme, they represent a movement, feeble and abortive it is true, towards the co-ordination of all the aspects of divinity in one Supreme Being. 9Motoöri proposed, and most European scholars have accepted, a derivation of Izanagi and Izanami from izanafu, a verb which means to invite, to instigate, the terminations gi and mi meaning respectively male deity and female deity. Hence the translation "Male who invites" and "Female who invites." There are, however, grave difficulties in the way of this interpretation. It is scarcely appropriate in the case of the female deity. Moreover, we must take into account the fact that these are not the only pairs of deities in which the terminations nagi and nami occur. We have also an Aha-nagi (foam-God) and Aha-nami (foam-Goddess), a Tsura-nagi (bubble-God) and Tsura-nami (bubble-Goddess), and a Sa-nagi (rapid-God) and Sa-nami (rapid-Goddess), in all of which na does not belong to the first part of the word, but is put for no, the genitive particle, by a letter-change of which we have other examples. The first element of Izanagi is, therefore, not izana but iza, which is met with as an exclamation of incitement. The harshness of making an interjection followed by a genitive particle is obvious. I am disposed to prefer the derivation which takes Iza as the name of a place. The Nihongi mentions a "true well" of Isa or Iza. There are two places called Isa in Hitachi, and an Isa no Jinja, or shrine of Isa, in Idzumo. It is even possible that these Gods are simply the Gods of Ise (Ise no gi and Ise no mi). 10A similar letter-change takes place in manabuta, eyelid, for me no futa, and tanasuye for te no suye. The difference between s and z is of little consequence in Japanese. 11=Musubi, the God of Growth=.--Musubi illustrates a different conception of creation from that of the myths of Ohonamochi and Izanagi and Izanami. This God is the abstract process of growth personified--that is, a power immanent in nature and not external to it. The emotion which prompts this personification--so natural to an agricultural people--is well portrayed in the words of a Kafir to the French traveller M. Arbrouseille: "Do I know how the corn sprouts? Yesterday there was not a blade in my field: to-day I returned to the field and found some. Who can have given the earth the wisdom and power to produce it? Then I buried my head in both hands." But while the emotion is the same, the Japanese conception differs. Musubi means growth or production. It is connected with the word umu, to bear, to bring forth, and with musu, to grow, to be born. Musu is said of moss growing on a stone and of ice forming on water. Musuko, a boy, and musume, a girl, contain the same element. As a God's name, Musubi is usually found with one of the laudatory adjectives, taka, high, or kamu, divine, prefixed to it. To these the honorific particle mi is commonly added, giving the forms Taka-mi-musubi and Kamu-mi-musubi. Even in the Kojiki and Nihongi these are recognized as two distinct deities. The Yengishiki (901-922) enumerates three more Musubi deities, and to these still others might be added. In poetry a single God Musubi is alone met with, and the Wamiōshō recognizes but one such deity. 12Probably the division into several persons was an esoteric refinement of which the people took little heed. 13Whether we have regard to his name or to the somewhat meagre notices in the Kojiki and Nihongi, there is nothing spiritual in the Japanese conception of Musubi. But the scribes learned in Chinese who committed the old myths to writing sometimes use characters which imply a spiritual view of his nature. They mean "producing-spirit." 14He is also called mi oya, or august parent. Hirata thinks that Taka-musubi and Kamu-musubi are husband and wife, the Kamurogi (progenitor) and Kamuromi (progenitrix) of the norito, and condemns his master Motoöri for holding that we have in these deities a unity in duality and a duality in unity. But his reasons are not quite convincing, and there is a passage in the Kojiki which cannot be reconciled with his view. The same author points out the resemblance of this God to the Hindu Siva, who represents the fructifying principle, the generating power that pervades the universe, producing sun, moon, stars, animals, and plants. Siva is represented in his temples by a phallus, and Hirata conjectures that this was likewise the shintai of Musubi. 15Musubi is sometimes called the Inochi no Kami, or God of life. The creation of mankind is attributed to him in a poem of the Jiu-i-shiu, where a rejected lover exclaims:-- 16"I hate not thee, It is the God I hate, Great Musubi:-- Why did he men create Unto so hard a fate?" 17The Kojiki speaks of the two deities Taka-musubi and Kamu-musubi as forming the second and third generations of Gods. The original text of the Nihongi omits all mention of them in this part of the narrative, but in a note there is a quotation from "one writing" in which they are named. In the various accounts of the measures taken to prepare the earth for occupation by Ninigi sometimes the Sun-Goddess is represented as giving instructions, sometimes Taka-musubi, sometimes both together, and sometimes Taka-musubi alone. Jimmu, in making mention of the two deities, gives precedence to Taka-musubi. This discordance in the various myths seems to indicate a struggle for ascendancy between the respective adherents of Musubi and the Sun-Goddess. The Nihongi states that in A.D. 487 (a fairly trustworthy date), by request of the Moon-God and the Sun-Goddess, the worship of Taka-mi-musubi, whom these two deities call their ancestor and the Creator of Heaven and Earth, was established in two places, and grants of lands and of peasants made for the maintenance of the shrines. This is possibly the beginning of the official worship of this God. In 859 several Musubi deities were raised to the first grade of the first rank. In the tenth century eight shrines to various Musubi deities existed within the Palace. With the official classes Musubi was a dangerous rival to the Sun-Goddess, more especially during the Augustan age of Japanese literature. 18But he was too philosophical for popular favour. His worship is now greatly neglected. The Musubu no Kami of the present day is identified with the Chinese Gekka-rōjin (moon-under-old-man), who presides over the fates of lovers. The strips of cloth frequently seen hung on bushes by the roadsides are offerings to him. The second meaning of Musubi, namely, "to tie," has no doubt something to do with this new view of the God's function. 19The Shōjiroku traces the descent of a large number of the noble families of Japan from the various forms of Musubi. This is a literal rendering of a statement which, in one sense, is true of everybody. We all resemble Topsy. 20=Kuni-toko-tachi=.--I place this deity provisionally among the personifications of abstractions. The name means literally "earth-eternal-stand." He is, therefore, apparently a deification of the durability of earth. Motoöri and Hirata take toko as for soko, bottom or limit. This would make this deity a personification of the horizon, or perhaps more accurately Lucretius's "flammantia mænia mundi." He has no sex and no special characteristics. He is barely mentioned in myth, and his cult, which is comparatively modern, was no doubt, as Hirata suggests, a result of the prominent position given him in the Nihongi as the first God in point of time, and as the ancestor of the Sun-Goddess, before whom he was therefore entitled to precedence. He was identified with the Taikyoku, or "Great Absolute," of the Chinese philosophers, was said to be immortal, and to comprise all the Gods in himself, was called "the name of the nameless, the form of that which has no form," and, in short, erected into a Supreme Being. In the fourteenth century an unsuccessful attempt was made to substitute him for the Food-Goddess as the deity of the outer shrine of Ise. At the present day he is worshipped at Mount Ontake, in the province of Shinano, a place much resorted to by pilgrims. 21O tentō-sama (august-heaven-way-personage) was probably originally a personification of the natural order of things--Laotze's tao, or Pindar's Νὀμος, the βασιλενς of Gods and men. But this is too abstract for the common Japanese. To them O tentō-sama is the Sun itself, endowed, it is true, with certain moral attributes. 22Drought and Famine deities belong to this class. None of these is of much importance. ‹Previous chapterShinto: The Way of the Gods 12Next chapterShinto: The Way of the Gods 14›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the United States via Project Gutenberg