Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/344

304 period the women of Japan gave proof of hereditary ability by the production of works which are recognised to this day as the masterpieces of the best age of Japanese literature.

The birth of the Sun-Goddess and the Moon-God is, it will be observed, differently accounted for in the various versions of the myth. Such inconsistencies trouble the myth-makers not a whit.

Izanagi's career having come to an end, he built himself an abode of gloom in the Island of Awaji, where he dwelt in silence and concealment. Another account says that he ascended to Heaven, where he dwelt in the smaller palace of the Sun. It will be observed that Izanagi was not immortal, and that he did not go to Yomi when he died.

The mythical narrative now turns to the doings of the Sun-Goddess and her brother Susa no wo.

Susa no wo, before proceeding to take up his charge as Ruler of the Nether Region, ascended to Heaven to take leave of his elder sister, the Sun-Goddess. By reason of the fierceness of his divine nature, there was a commotion in the sea, and the hills and mountains groaned aloud as he passed upwards. The Sun-Goddess, in alarm, arrayed herself in manly garb, and confronted her brother armed with sword and bow and arrows. The pair stood face to face on opposite sides of the River of Heaven. Susa no wo then assured his sister of the purity of his intentions, and proposed to her that they should each produce children by biting off and crunching parts of the jewels and swords which they wore and blowing away the fragments. Eight children born in this way were worshipped in after-times as the Hachōji or eight princely children.

Susa no wo's subsequent proceedings were very rude and unseemly. He broke down the divisions between the rice- fields belonging to his sister, sowed them over again, let loose in them the piebald colt of Heaven, and committed