Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882)/Section 12

by Ō no Yasumaro

[Sect. XII.—The Crying and Weeping of His Impetuous-Male-Augustness.]

So while [the other two Deities] each [assumed his and her] rule according to the command with which [their father] had deigned to charge them, His-Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness did not [assume the] rule [of] the dominion with which he had been charged, but cried and wept till his eight-grasp beard^[1] reached to the pit of his stomach.^[2] The fashion of his weeping was such as by his weeping to wither the green mountains into withered mountains, and by his weeping to dry up all the rivers and seas.^[3] For this reason the sound of bad Deities was like unto the flies in the fifth moon^[4] as they all swarmed,^[5] and in all things^[6] every portent of woe arose. So the Great August Deity the Male-Who-Invites said to His Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness: “How is it that, instead of ruling the land with which I charged thee, thou dost wail and weep?” He replied, saying: “I^[7] wail because I wish to depart to my deceased mother’s^[8] land, to the Nether Distant Land.”^[9] Then the Great August Deity the Male-Who-Invites was very angry and said: “If that be so, thou shall not dwell in this land,”^[10] and forthwith expelled him with a divine expulsion. So the Great Deity the Male-Who-Invites dwells at Taga^[11] in Afumi.^[12]

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1. See Sect. VIII, Note 1.
2. Lit, “in front of his heart.”
3. Sic in the original, to the perplexity of commentators.
4. “Flies in the fifth moon” is the received interpretation of the original term sa-bahe. Conf. sa-tsuki, the old native name for the fifth moon.
5. The text has here the character 滿, “to be full,” for which Motowori somewhat arbitrarily reads 涌, “to bubble up,” taking this word in the sense of swarming. The translator has endeavoured to preserve the vagueness of the original Japanese, which leaves it doubtful at first sight whether the flies or the deities should be regarded as the logical subject of the Verb. There is an almost identical passage near the beginning of Sect. XVI.
6. Lit. “a myriad things,” a Chinese phrase for totality.
7. The Chinese character for the First-Personal Pronoun used here and below by this deity is the humble one 僕 signifying literally “servant.” The commentators read it simply “I.”
8. The Japanese authorities simply read “mother.” But the character 妣, which is used in this place, specially designates a mother who is deceased.
9. I.e., Hades. The translation follows Motowori’s explanation of the original term Ne-no-kata-su-kuni, which is obscure.
10. I.e., say the commentators, “in this realm of ocean which I granted to thee as thy domain.” Probably, however, this is reading into the text more than it was meant to contain.
11. Derivation unknown.
12. From aha-umi, “fresh sea,” i.e., “lake.” The province of Afumi was doubtless so called from Lake Biha which occupies a great portion of its surface. It is also known as Chiku-tsu-Afumi, i.e., “the Nearer Afumi,” in contradistinction to Toho-tsu-fumi (in modern pronunciation Tōtōmi), i.e., “Distant Afumi,” a province further to the East. The modern pronunciation of Afumi is Ōmi.