Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/279

Rh The Empress Jingō was a good deal of a man. She was a great deal more of a man than her husband, though she was only his second wife. She was simply Empress-consort at first, eventually succeeding her husband, who died from want of faith, as will appear later. Masculine in character, she was most feminine in looks. The Nihonshoki speaks of her as exceedingly pretty and her father's pet, which latter fact proves to my mind that she was a woman of will, for I have observed that fathers are usually proud of daughters of decision. She it was who conquered Korea, in the histories at least, and did many other manly acts, besides giving birth to the Emperor Ojin, afterwards canonized as Hachiman, the God of War.

Apparently she was prone to being possessed, and ended by being quite intimate with deity. Her chronicle is a curious patchwork, pieced out, however, fairly complete between the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki. The Nihonshoki, after some Almanack de Gotha work introducing a few rather dry domesticities, simply kills her husband, without offering us any excuse for the deed