dripped from the point of the spear coagulated and became an island which received the name of Ono-goro-jima.[1]
The two Deities thereupon descended and dwelt in this island. Accordingly they wished to become husband and wife together, and to produce countries.
So they made Ono-goro-jima the pillar of the centre of the land.[2]
Now the male deity turning by the left, and the female[3]
- ↑ Spontaneously-congeal-island. Cf. Ch. "Kojiki," p. 19. Identified with a small island near Ahaji.
- ↑ The "Kiujiki" mentions a tradition according to which the two gods made the jewel-spear the central pillar of their house.
- ↑ The words for male and female are in the original Yō and In. It greatly excites the indignation of the Motowori and Hirata school to have these Chinese philosophical terms applied to Japanese deities. I cannot help thinking that some early marriage ceremony is adumbrated by this circumambulation. We have the ceremony of divorce further on. The erection of a house is not merely for practical reasons. It appears from several passages that a special building was a necessary preliminary to the consummation of a marriage in proper form.
hundreds of pilgrims of the male sex, access to females being at that time rigorously prohibited.
A cave at Kamakura formerly contained scores of phalli carved in stone.
I once witnessed a phallic procession in a town some miles north of Tokio. A phallus several feet high, and painted a bright vermilion colour, was being carried on a sort of a bier by a crowd of shouting, laughing coolies with flushed faces, who zig-zagged along with sudden rushes from one side of the street to another. It was a veritable Bacchic rout. The Dionysia, it will be remembered, had their phalli. A procession of this kind invaded the quiet thoroughfares of the Kobe foreign settlement in 1868, much to the amazement of the European residents.
That there are domestic shrines in the lupanars where these objects of worship are propitiated by having a small lamp kept constantly burning before them is, perhaps, not to be wondered at.
Is it a mere coincidence that wo-bashira, male pillar, should contain the element hashira which is used as a numeral for deities? See above, p. 5.
Some of the Rai-tsui, or thunder-clubs, figured in Kanda's "Ancient Stone Implements," Plate VII., are probably phalli. Their size precludes the view that they were used as weapons.
It may be, however, that both the Earth-axis and the phallic interpretations of the nu-boko are too subtle. The Hoko may after all be a spear and nothing more, and the nu or jewel merely an ornate epithet, as indeed Hirata suggests.
