A History of the Japanese People. Kikuchi Dairoku
Yamato he married again and had three sons, the youngest of whom succeeded to the throne. The bestowing of titles and rewards naturally occupied much attention, and to religious observances scarcely less importance seems to have been attached. All references to these latter show that the offices of priest and king were united in the sovereign of these days. Thus it was by the Emperor that formulae of incantation to dissipate evil influences were dictated; that sacrifices were performed to the heavenly Kami so as to develop filial piety; and that shrines were consecrated for worshiping the Imperial ancestors. Jimmu was buried in a tumulus (misasagi) on the northeast of Mount Unebi. The site is officially recognized to this day, and on the 3rd of April every year it is visited by an Imperial envoy, who offers products of mountain, river, and sea.
TRACES OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE
What traces of Chinese or foreign influence are to be found in the legends and myths set down above? It is tolerably certain that communication existed between China and Japan from a date shortly prior to the Christian era, and we naturally expect to find that since China was at that time the author of Asiatic civilization, she contributed materially to the intellectual development of her island neighbour. Examining the cosmogonies of the two countries, we find at the outset a striking difference. The Chinese did not conceive any creator, ineffable, formless, living in space; whereas the Japanese imagined a great central Kami and two producing powers, invisible and working by occult processes.
On the other hand, there is a marked similarity of thought. For, as on the death of Panku, the giant toiler of Chinese myth on whom devolved the task of chiselling out the universe, his left eye was transmitted into the orb of day and his right into the moon, so when the Japanese Kami returned from his visit to the underworld, the sun emerged from the washing of his left eye and the moon from the washing of his right. Japanese writers have sought to differentiate the two myths by pointing out that the sun is masculine in China and feminine in Japan, but such an objection is inadequate to impair the close resemblance.
In truth "creation from fragments of a fabulous anthropomorphic being is common to Chaldeans, Iroquois, Egyptians, Greeks, Tinnehs, Mangaians, and Aryan Indians," and from that fact a connexion between ancient Japan and West Asia might be deduced by reference to the beings formed out of the parts: of the fire Kami's body when Izanagi put him to the sword. On the other hand, the tale of which the birth of the sun and the moon forms a part, namely, the visit of Izanagi to hades in search of Izanami, is an obvious reproduction of the Babylonian myth of Ishtar's journey to the underworld in search of Du'uzu, which formed the basis of the Grecian legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. Moreover, Izanami's objection to return, on the ground of having already eaten of the food of the underworld, is a feature of many ancient myths, among which may be mentioned the Indian story of Nachiketas, where the name Yama, the Indian god of the lower world, bears an obvious resemblance to the Japanese yomi (hades), as does, indeed, the whole Indian myth of Yami and Yama to that of Izanagi and Izanami.
Is it not also more than a mere coincidence that as all the Semitic tribes worshipped the goddess Isis, so—the Japanese worshipped, for supreme being, the goddess of the Sun? Thus, here again there would seem to have been some path of communication other than that via China between Japan and the west of Asia. Further, the "river of heaven"—the Milky Way—which so often figures in Japanese mythology, is prominent in Chinese also, and is there associated with the Spinning Damsel, just as in the Japanese legend it serves the Kami for council-place after the injury done by Susanoo's violence to the Sun goddess and her spinning maidens. It has been remarked [Chamberlain] that the chop-stick which Susanoo found floating down a river in Izumo, and the sake (rice-wine) which he caused to be made for the purpose of intoxicating the eight-headed serpent, are obviously products of Chinese civilization, but as for the rescue of the maiden from the serpent, it is a plain replica of the legend of Perseus and Andromeda, which, if it came through China, left no mark in transit.
Less palpable, but still sufficiently striking, is the resemblance between the story of Atalanta's golden apples and the casting down of Izanagi's head-dress and comb as grapes and bamboo sprouts to arrest the pursuit of the "hag of hades." But indeed this throwing of his comb behind him by Izanagi and its conversion into a thicket are common incidents of ancient folk-lore, while in the context of this Kami's ablutions on his return from hades, it may be noted that Ovid makes Juno undergo lustration after a visit to the lower regions and that Dante is washed in Lethe when he passes out of purgatory. Nor is there any great stretch of imagination needed to detect a likeness between the feathered messenger sent from the Ark and the three envoys—the last a bird—despatched from the "plain of high heaven" to report upon the condition of disturbed Japan. This comparison is partially vitiated, however, by the fact that there is no tradition of a deluge in Japanese annals, though such phenomena are like ly to occur occasionally in all lands and to produce a great impression on the national imagination. "Moreover, what is specially known to us as the deluge has been claimed as an ancient Altaic myth. Yet here we have the oldest of the undoubtedly Altaic nations without any legend of the kind." [Chamberlain.]
It appears, further, from the account of the Great-Name Possessor's visit to the underworld, that one Japanese conception of hades corresponded exactly with that of the Chinese, namely, a place where people live and act just as they do on earth. But the religion out of which this belief grew in China had its origin at a date long subsequent to the supposed age of the Gods in Japan. The peaches with which Izanagi pelted and drove back the thunder Kami sent by Izanami to pursue him on his return from the underworld were evidently suggested by the fabulous female, Si Wang-mu, of Chinese legend, who possessed a peach tree, the fruit of which conferred immortality and repelled the demons of disease. So, too, the tale of the palace of the ocean Kami at the bottom of the sea, with its castle gate and cassia tree overhanging a well which serves as a mirror, forms a page of Chinese legendary lore, and, in a slightly altered form, is found in many ancient annals.
The sea monster mentioned in this myth is written with a Chinese ideograph signifying "crocodile," but since the Japanese cannot have had any knowledge of crocodiles, and since the monster is usually represented pictorially as a dragon, there can be little doubt that we are here confronted by the Dragon King of Chinese and Korean folk-lore which had its palace in the depths of the ocean. In fact, the Japanese, in all ages, have spoken of this legendary edifice as Ryu no jo (the Dragon's castle).
The eminent sinologue, Aston, has shrewdly pointed out that the term wani (crocodile) may be a corruption of the Korean word, wang-in (king), which the Japanese pronounced "wani." As for the "curved jewels," which appear on so many occasions, the mineral jade, or jadelike stone, of which many of them were made, has never been met with in Japan and must therefore have come from the continent of Asia. The reed boat in which the leech, first offspring of Izanagi and Izanami, was sent adrift, "recalls the Accadian legend of Sargon and his ark of rushes, the biblical story of Moses as an infant and many more," though it has no known counterpart in Chinese mythology.
It is noticeable that in spite of the honour paid to the stars in the Chinese cosmogony, the only star specially alluded to in Japanese myth is Kagase, who is represented as the last of the rebellious Kami on the occasion of the subjugation of Izumo by order of the Sun goddess and the Great-Producing Kami. So far as the Records and the Chronicles are concerned, "the only stars mentioned are Venus, the Pleiades, and the Weaver," the last being connected with a Chinese legend, as shown above.
Two other points remain to be noticed. One is that divination by cracks in a deer's roasted shoulder blade, a process referred to more than once in the Records and the Chronicles, was a practice of the Chinese, who seem to have borrowed it from the Mongolians; the other, that the sounding arrow (nari-kabura) was an invention of the Huns, and came to Japan through China. It had holes in the head, and the air passing through these produced a humming sound. As for the Chronicles, they are permeated by Chinese influence throughout. The adoption of the Chinese sexagenary cycle is not unnatural, but again and again speeches made by Chinese sovereigns and sages are put into the mouths of Japanese monarchs as original utterances, so that without the Records for purposes of reference and comparison, even the small measure of solid ground that can be constructed would be cut from under the student's feet.
ENGRAVING: BUNDAI SUZURI BAKO (A WRITING SET)