Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/148

138 wife's name, Inada-hime (the rice-field lady), is probably not without significance.

But mythology is rarely consistent. An explanation which suits one episode of a story may fail altogether when applied to others. There is nothing of the rain-storm about the Susa no wo who rescues a Japanese Andromeda from the great serpent which comes to devour her, or in the provider of timber and fruit-trees for mankind, or in the names and attributes of his very numerous children. His visit to Korea can hardly have a rain-storm significance. Moreover, it is impossible to pass over the explicit statement of the Nihongi that he was appointed to rule the land of Yomi. A Kojiki myth gives an account of his abode here in which no trace of his rain-storm quality is perceptible.

Dr. Florenz summarily rejects Hirata's theory that Susa no wo is identical with the Moon-God Tsuki-yomi. It must be admitted that if this deity ever had a lunar quality it had become forgotten in the times of the Kojiki and Nihongi. Both these works distinguish him unmistakably from the Moon-God. Nor is the European student likely to adopt the literal-minded Hirata's notion that the land of Yomi at first situated at the bottom of the Earth, became detached after Susa no wo was made its ruler, and was placed in the sky where we now see it—as the moon. Yet there is something to be said for his contention that the two deities were originally identical. The analogy of other mythologies suggests that a God whose relations with the Sun are at one time marital and at another hostile must be the Moon. There is nothing strange in the darkness of night and of the grave being presided over by the same divinity. Persephone, Queen of Hades, was a Moon-Goddess. The original identity of Susa no wo and Tsukiyomi would account for both deities being severally described in dif-