Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/152

 peror's female attendants. Even the wind was under the control of a female deity as well as a male; for to the disciples of Shintō the wind did not present itself as a fierce, turbulent agent of nature, but rather as an ether filling the space between earth and sky, the ladder by which spirits ascended to heaven. When Susano-o, expelled from the company of the gods, repaired to earth, his first exploit was to save a maiden from an eight-headed dragon which, year by year, had devoured one of her seven sisters. It was to a priest-princess that the Emperor Sujin entrusted the sacred mirror and sword after a divine revelation that they must no longer be kept in his own palace; it was by her niece, the subsequent depository of the insignia, that the site of the Ise shrine was chosen. Virgin priestesses danced in honour of the gods of each locality, and the birth of three maidens from the fragments of the "Impetuous Male Deity's" sword was held to prove the purity of his intentions. From the earliest times, legendary or historical, the sovereign was surrounded by a number of females, and down to the reign of the present Emperor's immediate predecessor, women alone were admitted to the Imperial presence, in accordance with the belief that, among the eight tutelary deities of the Mikado, one represented the female influence surrounding the Throne and imparting a gentle smoothness to the ruler's relations with the ruled.

The high rank accorded to woman in the