Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882)/Section 38

by Ō no Yasumaro

[Sect. XXXVIII.—The August Child-Bearing of Princess-Blossoming Brilliantly-Like-the-Flowers-of-the-Trees.]

So later on Princess-Blossoming-Brilliantly-Like-the-Flowers-of-the-Trees waited on^[1] [His Augustness Prince Rice-ear-Ruddy-Plenty, and said: “I^[2] am pregnant, and now the time for my delivery approaches. It is not fit for me to be delivered of the august offspring of Heaven privately;^[3] so I tell thee.” Then [His Augustness Prince-Rice-ear-Ruddy-Plenty] said: “Princess-Blossoming-Brilliantly!^[4] what! pregnant after one night!^[5] It cannot be my child. It must surely be the child of an Earthly Deity.”^[6] Then she replied, saying: “If the child with which I am pregnant be the child of an Earthly Deity, my delivery will not be fortunate. If it be the august child of the Heavenly Deity,^[7] it will be fortunate;”—and thereupon she built a hall eight fathoms [long] without doors,^[8] went inside the hall and plastered up [the entrance] with earth; and when the time came for her delivery, she set fire to the hall and was delivered.^[9] So the name of the child that was born when the fire was burning most fiercely was His Augustness Fire-Shine^[10] (this is the ancestor of the Hayabito, Dukes of Ata);^[11] the name of the child born next was His Augustness Fire-Climax;^[12] the august^[13] name of the child born next was His Augustness Fire-Subside,^[14] another name for whom is His Augustness Heaven’s-Sun-Height-Prince-Great-Rice-ears-Lord-Ears^[15] (three Deities^[16] [in all]).

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1. More literally “came to”; but the character which is employed implies that her visit was to a superior.
2. Written with the character 妾, a “concubine” or “handmaid,” a common self-depreciatory equivalent of the First Personal Pronoun in Chinese, when the speaker is a woman.
3. I.e. “secretly,” “without telling thee.”
4. In this one instance only is the name thus abbreviated. Motowori supposes it to be on account of the scorn implied in the god’s words.
5. Literally, “one sojourn.”
6. See Sect. I. Note 11. Here of course one of the gods of the same countryside is meant.
7. I.e. “thy child and the Sun-Goddess descendant.”
8. That is to say that it remained doorless after she had, as stated immediately below, plastered up the entrance.
9. Viz. of child, not from the flames. There is no ambiguity in the Japanese expression.
10. Ho-deri-no-mikoto.
11. Hayabito-ata-no-kimi. Ata is, as has been already stated in Note 2 to Sect. XXXVII, the name of a place in Satsuma. Haya-bito (“swift men,” “bold men,” literally, if we follow the Chinese characters “falcon-men”) was an ancient designation of the inhabitants of the south-western corner of Japan which was subsequently divided into the provinces of Satsuma and Ohosumi, and came by metonymy to be used to denote the province of Satsuma itself, for which reason it remained as the Pillow-Word for the word Satsuma even after the exclusive use of this latter name had been established. In after times the hayabito (also contracted to hayato and haito) were chiefly known as forming the Infantry of the Imperial Guard, a curious choice of provincials for which mythological sanction was invoked. They are also said to have furnished the performers of a symbolic dance mentioned at the end of Sect. XLI (see Note 3 to that Sect.). In later Sections of this work, the translator has ventured to render hayabito by “man-at-arms.”
12. Ho-suseri-no-mikoto.
13. The Honorific is doubtless prefixed in this case and not in the others, because it was to this prince or deity that the Imperial House traced its descent. Motowori’s kana reading, which prefixes Honorifics to all such names indifferently, obliterates this delicate distinction.
14. Ho-wori-no-mikoto. The derivation of this name is less clear than that of his elder brothers. Motowori’s proposal to consider it as a corruption of ho-yohari, “fire weakening,” is however plausible; and as this triad of names is evidently intended to paint the stages in the progress of the conflagration, the import of the third must be something very like what Motowori suggests, even it his guess at the original form of the word be not quite correct. The names of all three brethren differ more or less in the parallel passage of the “Chronicles.”
15. Ama-tsu-hi-daka-hiko-ho-ho-de-mi-no-mikoto. The interpretation of the last four members of this compound name is extremely doubtful.
16. The actual word in the text is not kami, “deity,” but its Auxiliary Numeral hashira.