Kojiki (Chamberlain, 1882)/Section 83

by Ō no Yasumaro

[Sect. LXXXIII.—Emperor Kei-kō (Part VIII.—Yamato-take Slays the Rulers of Sagamu).]

So reaching the Land of Wohari, he went into the house of Princess Miyadzu,^[1] ancestress of the Rulers of Wohari,^[2] and forthwith thought to wed her; but thinking again that he would wed her when he should return up [toward the capital], and having plighted his troth, he went [on] into the Eastern Lands, and subdued and pacified all the savage Deities and unsubmissive people of the mountains and rivers. So then, when he reached the Land of Sagamu,^[3] the Ruler of the land lied, saying: “In the middle of this moor is a great lagoon, and the Deity that dwells in the middle of the lagoon is a very violent Deity.” Hereupon [Yamato-take] entered the moor to see the Deity. Then the Ruler of the land set fire to the moor. So, knowing that he had been deceived, he opened the mouth of the bag which his aunt, Her Augustness Yamato-hime had bestowed on him, and saw that inside of it there was a fire-striker.^[4] Hereupon he first mowed away the herbage with his august sword, took the fire-striker and struck out fire, and, kindling a counter-fire, burnt [the herbage] and drove back [the other fire], and returned forth, and killed and destroyed all the Rulers^[5] of that Land, and forthwith set fire to and burnt them. So [that place] is now called Yakidzu.^[6]

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1. Miyazu-hime (in the “Chronicles” and in the printed editions of these “Records” previous to Motowori’s written Miyasu-hime without the nigori). Neither Motowori nor Tanigaha Shisei makes any suggestion as to the signification of this name.
2. Wohari no miyatsuko.
3. In later times Sagami. No authority great or small has given a satisfactory etymology of this name, though numerous and elaborate attempts have been made to explain it.
4. In the original hi-uchi (火打). Mr. Satow, who has given a translation of this passage in a note to his third paper on the “Rituals” to be found in Vol. IX, Pt. II, p. 202 of these “Transactions,” readers this word by “steel.” The present writer prefers not to prejudge the question as to whether the “fire-striker” intended by the author was a steel, or a wooden fire-drill. Motowori would seem to have held the latter view, as in his gloss on this passage he refers to the previous passage near the end of Sect. XXXII, where the fire-drill is explicitly mentioned. He also quotes an ancient ode in which “a fire-striker of metal” is specially referred to, so that it would seem that all fire-strikers were not of that material.
5. Remember that this word “Ruler” (Miyatsuko) had the acceptation of a “gentile name” as well as of the name of an office, so that we may understand the author to mean that Yamato-take destroyed the whole Ruling Family of Sagami. The parallel passage of the “Chronicles” has “he burnt all that rebel band, and destroyed them.”
6. The words rendered “that place” are supplied by Motowori, their omission being evidently a copyist’s error. Yaki-dzu signifies “the port of burning.”