Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/143

Rh effective deities of Shinto. In modern times, however, he has, for some inscrutable reason, been identified with a widely worshipped deity of unknown origin called Ebisu. This God has to all appearance nothing in common either with the sun or the leech. He is a favourite subject of the artist, and is usually depicted with a smiling countenance (emi or ebi means to smile), in ancient Japanese costume, and holding a fishing-rod while a tahi struggles at the end of his line. He is reckoned one of the seven Gods of good fortune, and is a favourite deity to pray to for success in trade. Merchants hold a great feast in his honour on the 20th day of the 10th month.

The ascription of the female sex to the most prominent among the Shinto Gods is not owing merely to caprice. Myth-makers have often more substantial reasons for their fancies than might be supposed. In the present case there is evidence that women played a very important part in the real world of ancient Japan as well as in that of imagination. Women rulers were at this time a familiar phenomenon. Both Japanese and Chinese history give us glimpses of a female Mikado who lived about A.D. 200, and whose commanding ability and strong character have not been wholly obscured by the mists of legend. Women chieftains are frequently mentioned. Indeed the Chinese seem to have thought that feminine government was the rule in Japan, for their historians frequently refer to it as the "Queen-country." In more historical times several of the Mikados were women. In some families descent was traced by the female line. From the Kojiki we learn that in Suinin's time it was the custom for the mother to give children their names.

One might think that so obviously solar a Goddess as the Heaven-shining-great-deity, or Sun-female, whose abode is the "Plain of High Heaven," who fills the universe with her radiance and leaves it to darkness when she conceals herself, and who is even spoken of in so many words as