Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/133

 unsubstantial, floating, muddy foam. Drops of this filmy thing, falling from the point of Izanagi's spear, crystallise into the first land, rising small and solitary from the "blue waste of sea." By that time the evolution of the creator and creatrix has attained such a stage that they are capable of procreation. They beget the islands of Japan as well as a number of lesser divinities, fashioned after their own image.

It is to be observed that the Japanese cosmographist did not rise to the idea of immaculate conception. He found the process of procreation sufficiently inscrutable, sufficiently miraculous, even as he knew it, to be worthy of the great originators of all things, and he saw no occasion to explain a miracle by a miracle.

To the islands thus begotten a number of the new deities descend. These are the terrestrial divinities. At the outset the condition of the land born in the waste of waters is almost as that of the earth in the language of the Pentateuch, — without form, and void, darkness brooding over the face of the deep. Then the god of fire is brought forth, his celestial mother expiring in travail. The creator follows her to the under-world, but fails to recover her from its shades, and, on his return, purifies himself by washing in the waves, during which process many new deities are evolved, among them, and chief among them, the Goddess of the Sun (Amaterasu), but among them, also, a legion of evil spirits of pollution,