The people enjoy the protection of these universally until the present day.
Before this Oho-na-mochi no Mikoto spake to Sukuna-bikona no Mikoto, and said:—'May we not say that the country which we have made is well made?' Sukuna-bikona no Mikoto answered and said:—'In some parts it is complete and in others it is incomplete.' This conversation had doubtless a mysterious purport.
(I. 60.) Thereafter Sukuna-bikona no Mikoto went to Cape Kumano,[1] and eventually proceeded to the Everlasting Land.[2]
Another version is that he went to the island of Aha, where he climbed up a millet-stalk, and was thereupon jerked off, and went to the Everlasting Land.
After this, wherever there was in the land a part which was imperfect, Oho-na-mochi no Kami visited it by himself, and succeeded in repairing it. Coming at last to the province of Idzumo, he spake, and said:—'This Central Land of Reed-plains had been always waste and wild. The very rocks, trees and herbs were all given to violence. But I have now reduced them to submission, and there is none that is not compliant.' Therefore he said finally:—'It is I, and I alone, who now govern this Land. Is
- ↑ In Idzumo.
- ↑ Toko-yo no kuni. The Japanese scholar Arawi identifies this with a province in the East of Japan, now called Hitachi.
examining ringworm (called in Japanese ta-mushi, i.e. rice-field insect), itch and other diseases under a microscope, it would appear that they are due to the presence of exceedingly small insects. It would also appear, he says, from a work recently published, that the human body is full of such animalcules.
The words "prevention and control" are rendered in the interlinear kana by Majinahi, i.e. witchcraft, including incantations, etc. Possibly the author had in mind the Oho-harahi, which deprecates "calamities of creeping things" and of "high birds." Here is a modern majinahi directed against hafu mushi. If you wish to keep your house free from ants, all you have to do is to put up a notice at the place where they come in, "Admittance, one cash each person." The economical ant goes no further.
Yamada in his dictionary defines majinahi as "the keeping off of calamity by the aid of the supernatural power of Gods and Buddhas."
