Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/81

 Out of such beliefs a rudimentary form of the doctrine of metempsychosis easily emerges. Yamatake, the great hero of prehistoric Japan, was transformed into a white bird, and Tamichi, the generalissimo vanquished by the Ezo, became a monster snake which devoured the desecrators of his tomb. Some ethnologists allege that the custom of human sacrifices existed in early days; but the theory is founded on a solitary legend of the Perseus-and-Andromeda type, which does not seem to justify any such inference. Everything, indeed, goes to show that while a sacrificial element undoubtedly entered largely into the rites of worship, it never involved the taking of human life, the objects offered to the gods being confined to the fruits of the earth, birds, animals, and the products of labour. Auguries were obtained by burning the hoof of an ox or the shoulder-blade of a stag, and deciphering the lines in the calcined bone. But there is reason to believe that no such method of sooth-saying had a place in the primæval superstitions of the Japanese; it probably came to them from Korea. A device more consistent with their own beliefs was to invoke a sign from heaven by music, when a deity descended and inspired the musician.

The most famous legend in Japan is that which is supposed to describe the origin of religious services. The Goddess of the Sun (Amaterasu Okami), having retired into a cave so