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thus assure the prosperity of our Japanese Empire. So, each one of them should have been justly and impartially rewarded with posthumous divine honours in recognition of those past merictorious[errata 1] services, yet, to my profound regret, just as in the case of Kaisui (117) (Chieh Tui), just the opposite has occurred, for in these days they do not all receive the same, on equal terms, divine honour of homage from the Imperial Government. Permit me, gracious sovereign, to mention those things which the Government has unfairly omitted.
First of all, the God of the Atsuta Shrine (whose divine emblem is the Kusanagi Sword), unlike the gods in some other shrines, has never yet participated in the enjoyment of the annual official Government homage notwithstanding the fact that the Sword, the Divine Insignia of the Mikados of Japan from generation to generation has been enshrined at Atsuta in Owari Province, ever since the time when Prince Yamatotake returned in triumph from his eastern campaign against the Emishi (Ainu), and that its supernatural virtue was reported as having once defied the sacrilegious effort of a foreign intruder (118) to enter the shrine by stealth in order to remove the Sword and take it across to his own land of Korea.
Second, it is of prime importance for public morality that every one should ceremoniously revere his personal forefathers, so each august emperor, (119) when he ascends the Throne, as a rightful successor of the great ancestral goddess, pays homage to all the gods, both heavenly and earthly, and therefore, it is self-evident that Amaterasu-O-Mikami is the greatest Ancestral
