Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/155

 Shintō system, the important functions assigned to her, and the value attaching to virginal purity, are thus amply proved. But while the beauty of virginity was recognised, no merit attached to celibacy. The maidens engaged in the service of the gods must preserve their chastity during the period of ministration, but after they had quitted the priesthood, no obstacle stood in the way of their marriage. Neither do we find any direct or indirect inculcation of the principle of monogamy. On the contrary, the chief of the terrestrial deities when, by a display of pity to an animal, he had won the hand of a princess for whose love he was his brothers' rival, made her his second wife, and, moreover, became the father of many children by other women.

Shintō traditions offer no distinct precedent for a custom characteristic of the educated Japanese in all ages; the custom of resorting to suicide as an honourable exit from a humiliating or hopeless situation. One incident, indeed, may possibly be quoted as the prototype of the practice. The son of the chief terrestrial deity, when he decided to abandon his right of succession in favour of the delegates of heaven, trod on the edge of his boat so as to overturn it, and with his hands crossed behind his back in token of submission, disappeared, — abdicated and killed himself, in simpler language. There is no warrant for assuming, however, that the example of the deity had any influence in establishing the