Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/84

 called sake, that is to say, rice-beer, must have been highly appreciated in early times, for no ritualistic enumeration of offerings made to the gods is without a reference to "piled up sake-pots" or "bellying beer-jars ranged in rows."

It has been shown above that the story of the first mortal emperor's conquest of Yamato indicates the use of clumsy boats and a marked deficiency of navigating enterprise. But the rituals of Shintô—as Japan's ancient creed is called—do not confirm that idea. They speak of ships that "continually crowd on the wide sea-plane," and of "a huge vessel moored in a great harbour, which, casting off her stern moorings, casting off her bow moorings, drives forth into the vast ocean."

It is curious that among the evils from which deliverance was besought, earthquakes are nowhere mentioned, and that robbery is not included in the list of polluting crimes. Some have inferred that this commonest of all sins in all nations was unknown among the ancient Japanese. But that is a doubtful conclusion. It might be inferred with equal justice that incest was regarded with abhorrence, since the rituals class it among sins contaminating the perpetrator. Yet it is certain that men had relations with the mothers of their wives and even with their own mothers and daughters,—though facts will presently be cited which mitigate the horror of such acts,—that unnatural crimes of a most