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226 he be appropriately worshipped. Thereupon the child of the deity whom the Sun-Goddess had originally chosen descends to earth,—not to Izumo in the north-west, as the logical sequence of the story would lead one to expect,—but to the peak of a mountain in the south-western island of Kyūshū.

Here follows a quaint tale accounting for the odd appearance of the béche-de-mer, and another to account for the shortness of the lives of mortals, after which we are told of the birth under peculiar circumstances of the heaven-descended deity's three sons. Two of these, Hoderi and Hoori, whose names may be Englished as "Fire-Shine" and "Fire-Fade," are the heroes of a very curious legend, which includes an elaborate account of a visit paid by the latter to the palace of the God of Ocean, and of a curse or spell which gained for him the victory over his elder brother, and enabled him to dwell peacefully in his palace at Takachiho for the space of five hundred and eighty years,—the first statement resembling a date which the Japanese historians vouchsafe. Fire-Fade's son married his own aunt, and was the father of four children, one of whom, "treading on the crest of the waves, crossed over to the Eternal Land," while a second "went into the sea-plain," and the two others moved eastward, fighting with the chiefs of Kibi and Yamato, having adventures with gods both with and without tails, being assisted by a miraculous sword and a gigantic crow, and naming the various places they passed through after incidents in their own career. One of these brothers was Kamu-Yamato-Iware-Biko, who (the other having died before him) is accounted the first human emperor of Japan—the first Mikado. The posthumous name of Jimmu Tennō was given to him more than fourteen centuries after the date which the historians assign for his decease.

Henceforth Yamato, which had scarcely been mentioned before, and the provinces adjacent to it, become the centre of the story, and Izumo again emerges into importance. A very indecent love-tale forms a bridge which unites the various fragments; of the mythology; and the "Great Deity of Miwa," who is identified