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being obeyed, the God was appeared. Mitoshi-no-Kami disclosed the secret in the following recipe: “It is I who brought the curse. Make a reel of hempenstalks, and therewith clear the rice-plants, by expelling the locust with the hemp leaves. Drive them out of the paddy field with Heavenly figwort (144), and sweep them thoroughly away with fan-shaped leopard flowers (145). If nevertheless, they will not retreat, place some beef at the mouth of the ditch in the field together with a phallic symbol (as a spell to appease the divine anger), and put corn-beads (146), toothache trees (147), walnut-leaves (148), and salt beside the dykes.” These divine orders were obeyed, and so the young rice-plants, which, because of the divine wrath, were dying, revived and throve, and that autumn the people’s hearts were gladdened by an abundant rice-crops. The custom having been started, Mitoshi-no-Kami is still worshipped, in the present Shinto Bureau, with offerings of a white boar, a white horse, and a pair of white domestic fowls.
The majority of people to-day hardly believe the above traditions handed down from the Divine Age, just as in the Chinese legend of Pan-ku (149), just as a summer insect (150) does not credit the existence of winter ice, and yet things divine or miraculous, however incredible they may appear, are often revealed for the benefit of a nation even in the presnt day of unbelief—an evidential proof of their actual existence. And in the ages prior to our own the Japanese civilization not being in an advanced condition. State ceremonies were not then perfected, and the national institutions were imperfect and unsatisfactory. How[errata 1]
